


i love you, ain't that the worst thing you ever heard?

by piginawig



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst, Canon Divergence, Coming Out, Eventual Happy Ending, Fix-It, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, Gay Richie Tozier, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Pining, Re-telling of chapter 2, an amalgamation of all 3 canons, skips to 27 years later, starts as teens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2020-10-12 20:08:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 36,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20570147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piginawig/pseuds/piginawig
Summary: They'd been so close to everything they ever wanted when they were young. And then they forgot.Now that they're back in Derry, they're remembering.





	1. quiet my fears with the touch of your hand

**Author's Note:**

> from an anon prompt from about a year ago: "you can trust me" and "please talk to me". what was meant to be a oneshot has turned into a chaptered story, so keep an eye out for updates. 
> 
> i marked graphic violence because this fic will feature parts from the sewers, but i don't plan on getting super graphic. just trying to play it safe.
> 
> based in the movie-verse, about three years after the losers fought IT the first time.
> 
> story and chapter titles will all be from taylor swift lyrics

They’re in the clubhouse, sitting side by side on the hammock. They have to be careful not to lean back too far or they’ll flip. Their thighs and arms are pressed together. When they sat down there was space between them, but the hammock wouldn’t allow it – they slid to the middle immediately. Eddie doesn’t really mind, he and Richie have never been the kind of friends that shy away from touch.

It’s quiet. Eddie doesn’t know what to say, hasn’t known what to say for days. He realizes it was probably stupid to let himself fall so deeply into denial the last few months, because now he’s having to deal with it all at once. He’s not prepared, and he’s almost scared that if he opens his mouth to say something, he’ll cry instead. He hasn’t cried in front of Richie since they were 14, and it was less embarrassing then because Richie was crying too.

“What time do you have to be home?” Richie’s voice sounds loud when it breaks the silence, even though it's actually much softer than usual.

Eddie looks up at the hatch, seeing the world darkening as evening falls into night. “Soon, probably. But I don’t care. I don’t want to leave yet.”

Richie had called him earlier in the afternoon and asked to meet at the clubhouse. It had been a few years since any of them had used the clubhouse, and he thinks the last time might have been a few days after they killed It, when they sat in the hammock together and cried.

When Eddie arrived Richie was already there, standing awkwardly beneath the hatch, like he wasn’t sure what to do without Eddie there. They’d said hello and then without discussion both went to the hammock.

Eddie remembers the first time they’d been on the hammock together. He’d tried to implement a schedule, ten minutes for each loser, but Richie was an annoying fuck who didn’t follow rules. He remembers climbing on anyway, the way they became a mess of gangly limbs and it wasn’t weird, it just felt normal, even though something in his brain told him boys probably shouldn’t sit together like that. To distract himself from the thought, he toed his shoes off and used his foot to poke Richie’s face.

Richie had been reading a comic, not even looking at him. He knocked his glasses off with the same foot, and Richie looked up, annoyance clear on his face. Eddie remembers how big he had smiled, how Richie eventually broke down into a smile too.

He’s not sure why that’s what he’s thinking about, but the memory brings a smile to his face.

“What are you smiling about?” Richie asks. His voice is quieter than usual, devoid of the nicknames and accents that usually fill his speech. He’s been like that for two months now, since they found out. Eddie feels like some of the life drained right out of his best friend when he got the news, and he isn’t sure some of his own life hadn’t drained right out too. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d gone any extended amount of time without seeing Richie. And now starting tomorrow they were going to be across the country from each other.

“Thinking about the first time we used this hammock. Remember?”

Richie pauses a moment and then huffs a laugh that’s supposed to sound annoyed but mostly sounds fond. “Yeah, you knocked my glasses off with your fuckin’ foot!”

“Yeah, well, you weren’t paying attention to me, what the fuck else was I supposed to do?” Eddie says before he can really think it through. They’re not looking at each other, so he doesn’t see Richie’s eyes widen.

“Coulda used your words like a normal person,” Richie suggests, shifting sideways as if to bump his shoulder.

Other parts of that afternoon float into Eddie’s memory and he almost cringes. “Nah, I was the fucking worst back then.”

“You saying you’re not the worst now?”

Eddie punches his arm. “Shut up. I’m just saying I was an annoying little shit. Remember the paddle ball?”

Richie snorts. “It’s truly a miracle Stan has never punched you.”

Eddie agrees. He remembers at the time feeling so much energy buzzing through his body all the time. Like the tiniest thing could set off an explosion, like he was always a moment away from either screaming or crying. He’s thankful he’d gone through that phase, because the explosion that finally happened had given him so much more freedom than he’d ever had. He’d stopped taking medicine, stopped using his aspirator, stopped believing he was sick. Over time, he’d mellowed (a little). But he still gets a bit embarrassed when he thinks about the fact that pretty much everything he ever said to anyone that year was yelled in a buzz of fast words that could barely be understood.

“It’s a miracle none of you punched me,” Eddie corrects. “Especially you.”

Richie shakes his head. They’re still side by side, not facing each other. “Never woulda punched you, Eds.”

“Probably still wouldn’t have gotten me to shut up, anyway,” Eddie says.

“I never wanted you to shut up,” Richie says, and Eddie almost thinks he heard him wrong. He finally turns his head. Richie’s looking at his feet. “You never annoyed me. I liked arguing with you.”

Eddie feels heat in his cheeks and he’s not sure why. It’s a nice thing for Richie to say. He’s not very used to Richie saying nice things, even though somewhere in him he knows that Richie thinks them. “I – Me, too,” he says, feeling like he’s just confessed something. He doesn’t know what he’s confessing, but his stomach has started to twist into knots and he tells himself that maybe he ate some bad food.

Richie leans forward, his elbows landing on his knees and his head falling into his hands. The motion tilts them both, and Eddie grabs Richie’s leg without thinking, to keep his balance. He hears Richie audibly gasp and Eddie realizes his hand is gripping Richie’s upper thigh. He yanks his hand back, and this time he knows why he’s blushing.

“_Sorry_, that was – I didn’t –“ he starts, flustered because Richie still hasn’t looked up, but he stops when Richie whimpers softly. “Richie?”

And then his best friend is crying. His shoulders are shaking and he tosses his glasses to the side, not caring where they land. He keeps his face hidden in his hands and Eddie doesn’t know what to do. He wonders if Richie’s been holding in his emotions about the move and has finally snapped.

“Rich, please talk to me,” he says softly. He looks at his best friend and knows he should comfort him somehow, maybe a hand on his back or something, but a part of him feels like it was his touch that had set Richie off to begin with.

“I – I can’t –“ Richie sputters, wiping at his eyes.

“I know it – it fucking _sucks_ that you’re moving, but we can still talk on the phone. Write letters and stuff. Maybe we can plan to go to college near each other, we can –“

“It’s not about moving,” Richie murmurs, so quietly Eddie can barely hear him.

“Then what is it?”

Richie wipes at his cheeks, trying to clear any evidence that he’d cried. “I can’t tell you. You – you’ll hate me.”

“I _wouldn’t_,” Eddie insists, wondering what the hell Richie thinks he could say that would cause Eddie to hate him. Eddie’s pretty sure he’s the person that loves Richie the most, but he shoves that thought aside, it’s weird, he shouldn’t think about it like that. “You can – if you tell me, I’ll tell you something, too.”

Richie glances at him. His eyes are rimmed red. “You’re keeping a secret?”

“Yeah,” he admits after a long pause. He’s kept it a secret because he doesn’t want to think too hard, doesn’t want to examine it too closely. “You can trust me, Rich. I can even go first.”

Eddie’s surprised by his own words. But Richie’s looking at him like he’s saved him from some terrible fate so he doesn’t regret them. He looks away, across the clubhouse to stare at the dirt wall.

“That summer,” he says, and he knows Richie understands which summer he means. “When I told you guys about what I saw, I wasn’t – I wasn’t completely honest.”

He can feel Richie’s eyes on him and he closes his own. Maybe that’ll make it easier to say. “I told you about the clown, and the leper. How he was… _diseased_, falling apart and disgusting and he… He kept offering to give me a blow job.”

Eddie whispers the word, almost afraid to say it out loud. “First he said he’d do it for a dime, and then he said he’d do it for free, and I – I don’t know what that _means_, but I know that it makes me feel sick. Does that mean a leper giving me a blow job is my biggest fear? Or just the blow job? Am I just… scared of sex? Because I don’t think about it, I don’t think about sex because that makes me feel sick, too, and It used that against me or something, I don’t know.”

Richie’s quiet for a few moments, and Eddie’s heart races in his ears. He’s terrified Richie’s going to stand up and leave, even though he knows Richie would never do that.

“You feel sick thinking about sex… with a girl?” He finally asks, almost like he had to force the question out of his mouth.

Eddie immediately understands the actual question and he feels his hands begin to shake. He clasps them together to try and hold them still.

He remembers another thing from that day in the clubhouse, the day his legs had been on either side of Richie’s body, the way Richie’s hand had held his leg up. He remembers that night, waking up and crying because his underwear were sticky, and he’d been dreaming about being in that hammock, and Richie’s hands other places besides his leg, and his legs on either side of Richie’s body in a different way. He cried because he could almost taste the way Richie’s tongue had tasted in his dream.

He ignored it, because dreams are just dreams and they don’t mean anything anyway. He remembers telling himself it was just because of how they’d been sitting that day, and it didn’t mean anything, it didn’t mean he was gay, it didn’t mean he liked Richie, it was just something that happened and it didn’t mean anything. He knows he’s gotten good at not thinking about it.

“Yeah,” he chokes out, “it makes me feel sick… with girls.”

He doesn’t say anything else. Can’t say anything else, his mouth has gotten dry and he can’t really hear his own thoughts in his head over the pounding of his heart.

“I’m gay,” Richie whispers. “That’s my secret. That’s why – I don’t want you to hate me.”

Eddie feels dizzy and realizes he’s started to breathe quicker. Richie’s gay and suddenly every one of their interactions are playing like a movie in his head. That summer, especially. He remembers Richie’s hands on his cheeks after he’d broken his arm, he remembers how he felt like it would be okay if Richie was the last thing he saw before he died. He remembers clinging to him over and over, every time they were scared they found each other. Remembers the _fucking_ hammock, and the way they intertwined themselves like it was the most natural thing in the world.

He doesn’t realize as tears begin to roll down his cheeks. Richie said the word. He said the word that Eddie’s kept buried so far down that he’s not sure he’d even be able to say it.

“Eds, I –“ Richie starts, putting his arm around Eddie’s shoulders before quickly pulling away with a muttered, “sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean to touch you, I don’t –“

Eddie’s breathing is slowing. His body had rebelled as his brain put together the pieces but now that the puzzle was complete, it was giving in.

“So you – you’re-“ Eddie stumbles on his words, can’t complete the sentence, can’t even think the word, and without thinking he asks what he really wants to know. “You’re… But not – not me.”

Eddie thinks his attempt at a sentence was confusing, and Richie probably doesn’t know what he’s asking, or if he’s even asking a question. He feels like Richie might think he was claiming his own heterosexuality and not understand.

But Richie is his best friend, and Richie understands better than anybody what Eddie’s trying to say. He’s asking why Richie pulled his arm away, why he doesn’t want to touch Eddie. Asking confirmation: _you're gay, but you don't want me_.

“Please don’t make me answer that question, Eds.”

“_Rich_,” Eddie says, and it almost sounds like a sob. Eddie looks at Richie, who’s face is pale and wrought with apprehension. “You can touch me.”

It sounds dirtier than he meant it and he knows Richie’s thinking it too because his eyes widen. But Richie is Eddie’s best friend, and he understands what he’s trying to say. This time when he wraps his arm around Eddie’s shoulder, he keeps it there, and loses his breath when Eddie curls into him.

Eddie buries his face in Richie’s chest because he doesn’t know what else to do. He feels his eyes tearing up again and shuts them, refusing to cry. Breathes in deeply and almost regrets it because he knows Richie’s smell better than anyone and it’s all around him and unbidden, he wishes that smell was always all around him. He places his focus on his arm, where Richie’s hand is holding his bicep, thumb sweeping back and forth across the skin.

He gives himself a few moments to calm down. To let the comfort of being in Richie’s arms wash over him, because even though he’s terrified by the thoughts he’s having about Richie, he’s still the most comfortable thing in the world. Eddie lifts his head a little, until he’s looking at Richie’s chin, and he can tell Richie’s looking down at him but he can’t look up, not yet, can’t meet his eyes as he’s realizing that he doesn’t feel sick when he thinks about sex with a boy. With Richie.

He sucks in a deep breath and lets it out slowly, then watches in fascination as Richie’s body trembles and goosebumps appear on his neck where Eddie’s breath had touched him. He slowly pushes himself forward and breathes, wanting to see it again, and he doesn’t know when he’d done it but he’s bunching the hem of Richie’s shirt in his hand, holding on so tightly his knuckles are white. Richie’s breathing heavily but not moving, and Eddie leans in and up until his nose is touching Richie’s cheek. He can feel Richie’s deep intake of breath and closes his eyes. He scoots even closer, his other arm wrapping around Richie’s waist and his forehead tilting to rest against Richie’s temple.

Neither of them moves after that, but their breathing is loud around them and each can feel the other’s hand shaking.

Eddie feels like his mind has turned off, and he can’t remember it ever doing that before. Like every anxiety washed away, and the only thing his brain is responding to is how much he wants to be close to his best friend.

“_Eds_,” Richie chokes. “Eds, please don’t – if you don’t, you don’t have to-“

Richie never gets a complete thought out but Eddie understands. _Don’t do this if you don’t mean it_.

Eddie doesn’t know if he can speak, his mouth is so dry and his lips are so close to Richie’s face that he thinks if he opened his mouth they would brush his skin. He hums instead, trying to let Richie know without words that he wants this, too, wants Richie.

Richie lets out a breath that Eddie thinks is relief, and feels Richie’s hand pulling at his own, the one clutching at his shirt. They don’t say anything as Richie pulls Eddie’s hand open, slots their fingers together and lets their joined hands fall into his lap. Eddie wonders if Richie’s eyes are closed, too.

They sit that way for what feels like an hour. Eddie knows his mom is going to kill him when he gets home so late but he doesn’t care, because this is the last time he’s going to see Richie, maybe ever, so who the fuck cares if he’s grounded until graduation? What the fuck in this stupid town matters if Richie isn’t here?

The fear comes creeping back into his mind. He thinks at that moment that he wants Richie to turn his head so badly, so that they’re facing each other, and their foreheads are together and their noses are together and their lips are together. He also thinks it’s the most terrifying thought he’s ever had.

Richie squeezes his hand, whispers, “_it’s late, we should probably go home,_” and they pull apart. He doesn’t want to believe it, but something tells Eddie they’re not going to see each other again. That when they turn in different directions to go home, he’ll be walking away from his best friend, the person he loves most in the world, for good. His chest aches and he almost wants to use his aspirator.

When they stand from the hammock, they’re no longer touching anywhere. Eddie feels like he’s lost a limb.


	2. i forgot that you existed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie and Richie arrive in Derry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for such a lovely response! i hope you continue to enjoy what is essentially the way i wish IT chapter 2 would've happened.  
this chapter is shorter than the first, and much more introspective. it's very rambling and meant to feel like a train-of-thought.

Eddie’s barely paying attention to where he’s going, but he doesn’t really have to. He’s always been a natural at finding his way, never needed to look up the directions. He can’t remember the last time he got lost, even in cities he’d never been to before.

_a human compass, is what Big Bill Denbrough had called him_

But he’s been here before.

He’s driving the half-hour trip from Bangor to Derry. He’s never driven it in this direction, hasn’t gone back to Derry since he left 23 years before. He had been 19 and after a year at the closest community college, (his mother guilting him into commuting (what even was the point of “going off” to college? To make friends? Eddie’d never made a friend in his life, what was going to make that change now and _don't you love me, Eddie?_)), he’d been shocked when his mother suggested they make the move to Queens.

It was random, but Eddie agreed. He’d never liked Derry, anyway. He felt stifled; like he wanted to scream at everyone all the time but there was no one to scream at. Agitation itched beneath his skin and he thought maybe it was just Derry.

It wasn’t.

In New York, he kept his head down and went to school and graduated and got a job and finally convinced his mother to let him move out when he was 26. For ten years he had lived in a haze of work. As a risk analyst he got the opportunity to give into his urge to yell, to tell people how fucking stupid they were, because even the smartest of businessmen he had worked for all managed to be fucking idiots when it came to their finances, and he was good enough at his job that he was allowed to tell them that.

And then Myra had barreled into his life three short years after his mother had died and easily took her place. She kept his medicine cabinet stocked, made sure his aspirator was always full, and insisted he go to the hospital at least once a month.

It was the way he’d grown up. The way he’d always lived. He didn’t know anything different. Or at least, he didn't know that he knew anything different.

It was comfortable, in its own suffocating kind of way.

He was sick. Maybe not with any specific physical disease that any doctor had ever been able to find-

_Doctor K!,_ his mind supplies in a weird accent, and he tightens his grip on the steering wheel to keep his hands from shaking

-he’s _delicate_. Wasn’t allowed to run in gym class because of his asthma. He recalled a time at a shoe store, he couldn’t have been more than 7, when he had wandered away from his mother and found a cool machine that was supposed to tell you your shoe size.

You could stick your foot right in and see all the way inside to your bones, and Eddie had stuck his foot right in until his mother had shrieked, her shrill voice yelling about how he was going to get _cancer_, how he had to be more careful, _he was going to get himself killed if he wasn’t more careful._

He had learned quickly that he had to rely on his mother to keep him safe, because his own brain didn’t do a good enough of job of analyzing the risk of a situation.

His mother’s voice lived in his head even after she was dead, his own risk analyst, reminding him to bring his umbrella in case it rained so he wouldn’t catch cold and then catch pneumonia and then die. Reminding him to take his pills, to use his aspirator, because he’s _delicate_.

His mother’s voice died when Mike Hanlon called.

Myra had tried to take the place of her voice the same way she’d taken the place of the woman herself, but Eddie was remembering Derry, remembering that summer and something happening, something killing kids and a promise. He wasn’t sure who he’d made the promise with, besides Mike, but he knew there were others

_lucky number seven_

and he couldn’t break this promise, it was too important.

So with Myra’s shrieks in his rearview mirror he had headed to the airport.

On the plane some memories came into sharper focus, slowly. He could see posters for missing kids in his mind’s eye, a bright yellow raincoat and... a _clown_? Yes, it had been a clown, he was sure of it.

Pumpernickel?

Pinwheel?

The image of a leper in a shredded clown suit popped into his head and he jumped so hard he spilled his ginger ale on the man in the seat next to him.

_Pennywise_.

He had to go back. He felt a familiar feeling dread that he knows he felt when he was a kid, but something told him that this was what his life had been leading up to, that the last twenty-something years didn’t mean anything, he was just lying in wait, because this is the thing he was born to do –

_if It comes back, promise..._

-the thing they were all born to do. It had started that day, in the barrens. He and Big Bill and… someone. Someone else.

It wasn’t until he landed and climbed into his rental car that another name came to him. Haystack. That couldn’t have been his real name, surely, but he was the one who knew how to build the dam, he was the one who –

He isn’t sure. There’s not a face with the name. There’s not even a real name.

But he remembers the dam, and the excitement of creating something. It was more than just Bill and Haystack, there were others, and… an Irish cop? Is that where Richie –

_Richie_.

Who the _fuck_ was Richie? He feels his own face heating up and he doesn’t know why, doesn’t know why the name Richie makes him blush like a fucking schoolgirl, makes the itchiness that’s been under his skin his entire life amp up, makes him want to yell insults at someone who’s face he can’t even picture.

But he remembers glasses, and distinctly in his mind hears five different voices saying, “_beep-beep, Richie!_” and without thought he says it too, out loud to himself in the car on the way to Derry, Maine.

“Beep-beep, Richie,” and then he laughs.

When he parks the rental at the Derry Town House he can’t believe it looks exactly the same as it did when he was a kid. He gets a room easily, the attendant at the desk hardly seems present as she hands him a key, and he drops his bags on the bed without much thought. He washes up a little, just his hands and his face, avoids his reflection because he looks pale and _scared_.

He realizes he's not just scared of It, whatever It is, he’s scared because next he’s going to Jade of the Orient. Mike had called him when he’d landed at the airport, informed him of a little reunion at the restaurant that Eddie had never heard of. Hearing his voice again, Eddie started to be able to picture his face, and inexplicably felt the words _apocalyptic rockfight_ echo in his head.

“A lot’s changed, Eddie. The restaurant’s near the shopping mall,” Mike had said.

“There’s a _shopping mall?_”

But Mike had given him good directions, and Eddie knows he’ll be able to find it.

It’s not finding a new location that has him nervous, though, it’s seeing the others.

Mike, and Bill, and Ben – _Ben_, who was Haystack, nicknamed by Richie, who’s name made Eddie’s chest feel tight. And Beverly, red hair and both the prettiest and poorest girl in school, and also the best. And… _Staniel_? That can’t be right, Eddie’s sure Staniel is as much of a name as Haystack –

Stan.

Stan the Man Uris, of course.

His mind is so occupied being bombarded with memories so scattered they barely make sense, that he acts on autopilot, doesn’t even notice until he’s parked at the restaurant.

He knows if he stops to give himself a pep talk he’ll chicken out. He’ll drive away, ignore Mike’s calls, get on a plane back to New York and back to Myra and back to being sick, back to being afraid. Back to being _delicate_.

He refuses to let himself feel delicate as he gets out of the car and walks into Jade of the Orient.

* * *

The first thing Richie did when he’d hung up the phone was throw up. The first thing he did when he landed in Maine was stop at a gas station to buy a pack of Winstons_-_

_because Winstons taste the way cigarettes are supposed to_

-even though he hadn’t smoked in four years.

But smoking had been fun, hadn’t it? Smoking with Beverly Marsh and Haystack. Haystack, who tried so hard to not let Richie know it was his first smoke but ended up in a coughing fit anyway. Richie could see a round face, but that was it. Beverly Marsh had red hair and Richie had spent the first two weeks as her friend trying to fall in love with her.

But he hadn’t, had he? No, he hadn’t. But he’d been in love with _someone_. Someone he'd forgotten as he settled into his new town in the Midwest in his junior year of high school.

It was one of the losers – _the losers club_, he hadn’t thought those words in at least 20 years – and they’d all be returning, so he was sure he’d figure it out soon enough.

They’d all be there, Bev, and Haystack, and Stan. Stan, who had bought fucking shower caps for them all so that spiders wouldn’t get in their hair in the clubhouse, the clubhouse with the hammock –

The _fucking_ hammock.

His hands shake as he pulls up at the restaurant Mike had given him directions to. His suitcase is in a room at Derry Town House even though he hadn't made a reservation, because there were always vacancies, no one ever came to Derry, Maine.

That fucking hammock, lying across from someone, someone who’s legs tangled with his own, someone who was so annoying and so fucking funny at the same time –

He parks and sits in his car as the memories hit him. The picture still isn’t clear, but he remembers laughing over comic books, sitting side by side, shoulders touching. Remembers sitting with – _someone_ – on that hammock –

Another car pulls into the lot and not long after it parks a man gets out. Richie has a moment to wonder if it’s another member of the loser’s club, one of his old friends, and he watches. The man is short with dark hair and Richie knows he knows him, recognizes the shape of him in a way he can’t explain –

And then the man turns and Richie sees his face. It’s too far to tell in the dark, but Richie knows dark brown eyes are shining on that face, the same brown eyes that shone across from him on that _fucking_ hammock, and his breath hitches as he watches the man walk inside.

_Eds_.


	3. have i known you twenty seconds, or twenty years?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Losers Club reunites at The Jade of the Orient.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi! you might notice there was already a chapter 3 of this fic - it's been rewritten and this is the new version. there are major changes but a few things are the same and therefore might feel familiar.
> 
> there's a lot of dialogue from the movie in this, which is a pattern that will continue throughout the fic. there WILL be changes, though, both big and small - from a few words to entire scenes. 
> 
> thanks for sticking with it!

It almost feels like stepping into an alternate dimension, walking into the restaurant and seeing Mike Hanlon and Bill Denbrough.

He’s informing the waitress of his dietary restrictions when he sees them, and Bill and Mike turn to him at the sound of his voice. Eddie can see the moment recognition lights up Bill’s eyes and he smiles, waves awkwardly.

“Eddie,” Mike greets him, stepping over to wrap him in a hug. Eddie momentarily freezes, he doesn’t like to be hugged, doesn’t really liked to be touched, but he relaxes into Mike’s arms like it’s the most natural thing in the world. He hugs Bill next, and it feels so much safer than Myra had ever felt, so much safer than his mother. Like a big brother, a leader, someone who always knew what to do. Nothing could go wrong if Big Bill was there.

Eddie remembers that Bill had been his first friend. They were a little duo, playing in the barrens and reading comics before the others had showed up.

“It’s good to see you, Eddie,” Bill says warmly.

After the greetings the room falls into silence. Mike looks apprehensive and Bill looks uncomfortable. There’s tension between them and Eddie thinks he understands – Bill must not know why they’re here, either. Why a painful scar had ripped through their hands after Mike called. What had happened and what they have to do now that they’re back. He feels his own chest tighten and reaches into his pocket for his aspirator.

Bill raises his eyebrows at this but doesn’t say anything. Eddie can’t imagine what there would be to say. Surely Bill remembers he has asthma?

“I’ll explain everything once we’re all here,” Mike says, as though he knows what Eddie’s thinking. He notices it does nothing to soften the almost-harsh look on Bill’s face. It makes Eddie so nervous that he shoots off his aspirator another time, breathing the medicine in deeply and feeling his throat open. “The others should be here any minute.”

* * *

There’s a man and a woman standing outside the door of the restaurant, and the red hair tells Richie that the woman’s Beverly. He gets out of his car and watches her embrace the man. He’s not sure who the man is at first, but something clicks in his mind – Haystack. After a moment, he clears his throat.

“Wow, you two look amazing,” he says loudly. “What the fuck happened to me?”

His comment startles a laugh out of Ben, who takes the step forward to wrap Richie in a hug. Richie hugs Beverly next, and when he wraps his arms around her, he hears an almost inaudible hiss as though she was wincing, but when he pulls back, she's smiling at him.

“Shall we?” She asks, gesturing toward the door.

When they find the small room reserved for the loser’s club, there are three men already there. He recognizes Mike immediately, and the man next to him, he’s almost positive, is Big Bill Denbrough. The other man is the one from the parking lot, but his back is to Richie.

He feels an inexplicable urge to have his attention. He wants this man’s eyes on him, and he desperately shoves the thought away, pretending like it hadn’t happened. He’s practiced at pretending like his thoughts hadn’t happened, and he glances around for a distraction. There’s a large gong and, feeling like he needs to make an entrance, be the center of attention the way he suddenly knows he was as a kid, he hits it.

* * *

Eddie jumps at the noise, startled into another puff on his aspirator. He shoves in it his pocket afterward, annoyed at himself for how much he’s needing to use it on this trip. When he turns and hears, “this meeting of the loser’s club has officially begun!” he feels like the floor has fallen out from beneath his feet.

He knows he looks uncomfortable and the atmosphere is tense, and without thinking he blurts, “heh, look at these guys.”

His eyes meet the man’s who had hit the gong. His heart… settles. A calmness sets in as they look at each other. And then he gestures to the other man and holds his arms out around his own stomach, miming that the man had been bigger before. Eddie wants to laugh, then wonders why he’d find something so childish funny.

And then he knows him.

He had found him funny for a few years now, in a strange way he’d never been able to articulate, as he watched his stand-up. His jokes were bad and sexist, he looked like he’d just rolled out of bed with a hangover, and there was never light behind his eyes.

Everyone is greeting each other around him as he stares. Richie Tozier is one of Myra’s least favorite comedians. Eddie doesn’t know how the fuck he didn’t realize, when he watched that stupid Netflix special (three times), that he’d been watching the boy who had once been his best friend.

It feels like a puzzle piece slotting into place in his brain; he had known the man’s jokes weren’t his own. He hadn’t known why he was convinced of it, but he believed it so strongly he had shared the opinion with Myra, who just told him _he’s not very funny_ and _can we please watch something else_. Now he realizes it’s because he knows Richie. Knows the man behind the jokes, knows what his face looks like when he thinks he’s Getting Off A Good One and it’s not the face he wears onstage.

He’s so lost in thought that he startles again when Beverly wraps her arms around him. He hugs back, feeling a smile take over his face.

“Beverly!” He says, and she grins at him. Her hair is still short, only a little longer than she’d had it when they were kids. Somehow she’d gotten even more beautiful with time, and he’s about to tell her when someone calls his name.

He turns toward the voice and as he meets the man’s eyes, he shakes his head in disbelief. He remembers what Richie meant – Ben had been big as a kid. If Beverly had gotten more beautiful with time, then Ben “Haystack” Hanscom had somehow transformed into someone that could pass for a male model. He’s almost disoriented when Ben hugs him, because for some reason his brain is distinguishing this person as _Ben_, and the boy he’d known in childhood as _Haystack_. But when Ben smiles at him before moving to find a seat, Eddie sees it, and suddenly he’s the same old Haystack again.

And then Richie is standing in front of him, and thoughts of Ben disappear. His breath hitches in his throat and he thinks about reaching for his aspirator but he’s frozen.

“Eds?”

“Don’t call me that.” The words spill from his mouth. Richie looks delighted, and then he’s engulfing Eddie in a hug. Bill’s hug had made Eddie feel safe, but Richie’s hug makes him feel so much more than that. Richie’s hug makes the calmness he’d felt when their eyes met seem like nothing. For a moment his mind is free, empty of worry, and he knows he’s had these arms around him before and felt the very same way. And then his thoughts begin to race, trying to sort memories of Richie from childhood, but it’s blurry. He’s sure he spent more time with Richie than with anyone else. He knows Richie held the title of Best Friend. He doesn’t want to let go.

“Holy shit,” Richie mutters once they separate. He looks awed, and heat fills Eddie’s cheeks. “Eddie fuckin’ Spaghetti.”

He’s smacking Richie’s arm and telling him to shut the fuck up before he can register it.

“Already?” Beverly’s voice cuts into their moment. “Couldn’t go thirty seconds without the bickering?”

“Aw, Bevvie,” Richie coos, “are you jealous?”

“In your dreams, Tozier,” she says with a smirk, and Eddie laughs breathlessly. He doesn’t reach for his aspirator. 

* * *

There’s an empty seat between Richie and Eddie, but Richie still feels Eddie's presence like it’s static electricity. He orders a drink, hoping to calm himself down a little bit. He falls into his old pattern of cracking jokes so naturally it’s like he never went a day without these people, but a traitorous voice in his mind reminds him he went over 20 years without them.

He has a sense of déjà vu when his eyes are drawn to Eddie after every joke he makes. Flickers of memory play out behind his eyes. Reading comics in the room above the garage at Eddie’s house. The way Eddie would roll his eyes and tell him to “_shut the fuck up, Trashmouth_,” but he was always smiling when he said it. A flash of a bridge, of days spent in the arcade, of being more scared than he’d ever been in his life.

A sense of dread settles over him when he remembers that fear. He thinks he felt that fear that whole summer. He can’t place what he was so scared of, except that it had to do with Eddie. And It. He watches Eddie, who’s eyebrows are furrowed as he talks just as fast as he did when they were kids, ranting at Richie for making a joke that Richie’s already forgotten. He looks down at the table, head spinning.

_What the fuck is happening?_

He’s broken from his thoughts when he hears Eddie’s laugh. He looks over; he’s laughing at something Bill said, if the way he’s looking at him is any indication. He feels a rush of jealousy and takes a gulp of his drink to tamp it down. And then he notices Eddie’s fourth finger on his left hand. Ice spreads through his chest, and he spots a full shot glass someone had set aside. He grabs it and puts it in his mouth, knocking it back while holding the glass with his teeth. He can’t fucking do this sober.

“So, Eddie,” he says loudly, “you got married?”

“Yeah,” Eddie answers with a frown. He’s speaking just as loud. “Why’s that so fucking funny, dickwad?”

“What, to like, a woman?” He says, then mentally slaps himself because why the fuck would he say that?

“Fuck you, bro,” is all Eddie says. Richie huffs out a laugh because he couldn’t remember much, but he was positive Eddie was not the kind of person to use a word like ‘bro’.

“Fuck you!” He yells back, laughter still in his voice.

“What about you, Trashmouth?” Bill asks from across the table. “You married?”

“No way Richie’s married,” Bev says before he can answer.

“No, I got married,” Richie says, keeping his voice steady.

“Richie, I don’t believe it,” Beverly tells him with a grin. Ben asks when it’d happened.

“I didn’t know this,” Eddie says petulantly. Richie thinks, for a moment, _of course you wouldn’t know, you didn’t know I existed until today_.

Instead, he says, “you didn’t know I got married?”

“No.”

“Yeah, no,” he starts, grinning, “me and your mom are very happy together –“

Eddie looks very done with his antics, so he kicks it up a notch, giving his best impression of Jabba the Hutt as Eddie’s mom.

“We all get it,” Eddie says, throwing his hands up. “My mom was a great big fat person! Hilarious! Hysterical!”

He throws back a drink.

Richie grins. It doesn’t make sense, but he’d missed this.

* * *

Eddie is drunk. His heart is no longer racing every time Richie so much as looks at him, and he isn’t second guessing every word that comes out of his mouth. He’s feeling free and enjoying himself for once in… he can’t even remember the last time he’d had this much fun.

“Let’s talk about the elephant _not_ in the room,” Richie says suddenly. Eddie looks at him but he’s staring at Ben, on Eddie’s other side. “What the fuck man?”

“Okay,” Ben concedes with an embarrassed smile, “obviously I lost a few pounds.”

“Yeah, no fuck, man,” Richie laughs. Eddie glances back at him, but he’s still staring at Ben. He doesn’t like it. He looks to Ben as well. “You’re like – uh, you’re hot.”

Without thinking, Eddie says, “It’s true!” He looks Ben up and down. He flushes after, wishing he hadn’t said that. He only looked because Richie pointed it out, and he's not blind; he can recognize when another man is attractive. He just prefers to not share it when he does.

Richie starts talking again. “You’re like, every Brazilian soccer player wrapped up into one person – gorgeous!”

Eddie feels hot all over, itchy beneath his skin in the worst way, and takes another drink as Beverly says, “You’re embarrassing him!”

“Come on, come on,” Ben interjects. “Is Stanley coming, or what?”

Eddie glances at the empty seat between himself and Richie. Stan should be sitting there.

“Stanley Urine?” Richie asks. “No, he’s a fucking pussy. He’s not gonna show.”

Eddie frowns, Richie’s words settling uncomfortable over him. He remembers liking Stan. Stan was good, and they’d all done – something, so none of them were pussies. They all did things that scared them that summer, like when Ben was bleeding and Eddie patched him up –

“Why would Stanley save you, anyway?” Eddie asks, referring to Ben using him as a distraction. “Was I not the one who basically performed surgery on you after Bowers cut you up?”

“Please tell me you ended up becoming a doctor, Ed,” Beverly says with a smile.

Eddie’s frown returns and he looks down at the tablecloth. He could remember telling all his friends he was going to be a doctor one day.

“No, uh, I ended up becoming a risk analyst,” he answers.

“Oh, that sounds really interesting, what does that entail?”

Eddie looks to Richie, who, for some reason, seems interested. Cautiously, he says, “Yeah, I work for like, a big insurance firm, and… uh…”

He feels the embarrassment like a weight on his chest as Richie pretends to snore. When Richie looks at him with a laugh, he glares. “Fuck you, dude. Fuck you.”

“Was this job invented before fun?” Richie asks.

“Oh, that’s so not funny,” he tells him. He could feel Richie getting under his skin. No one had gotten under his skin like this since – well, since Richie. As kids. But he didn’t always get under his skin. They used to talk to each other, have normal conversations and serious conversations and funny conversations. They used to do so much more than this – Richie teasing him and him overreacting. He wants that back - wants to feel like Richie is his best friend, not his bully. 

* * *

Richie holds a glass in his hand, half-full of whiskey. He knows he needs to slow down, but every time Eddie so much as fucking looks at him he feels like he needs another drink. He’s losing control of his mouth, not that he had much control over it on a good day, and he knows he has to stop teasing Eddie. He feels 13 years old again and he doesn’t like it.

Eddie’s showing him something on his phone, his Safari app open on WebMD. His face had been softer when he leaned closer to Richie, holding his phone out and asking his opinion. It makes him nervous, the way Eddie's looking at him like he actually trusts anything Richie says. He doesn’t remember what Eddie is claiming to have, but he knows enough to be aware that diagnosing yourself on the internet is about the stupidest thing a person can do. He tells this to Eddie.

“Shut the fuck up, man,” Eddie tells him, placing his phone on the table with a scowl. Richie notices his messaging app has 99+ notifications that Eddie seems to be ignoring, but he doesn’t say anything. Perhaps the wife isn’t as much of a problem as he’d feared.

Not that he was going to _do_ anything. Or that it even matters whether Eddie has a wife. Because Eddie is straight, and whether he loves his wife or not he is not going to magically fall in love with Richie. Or even in lust. There will be no fucking his childhood best friend at the inn tonight.

“You look like you haven’t been to a doctor in five years,” Eddie says suddenly, looking him up and down. Richie recalls the way Eddie had looked at Ben – impressed, not with the judgment that was currently on his face.

“Because I’m healthy,” Richie says. “Healthy and strong –“

“You are not strong,” Eddie argues. “Your arms are – are fuckin’ toothpicks.”

“I’m fucking stronger than you!” He exclaims, pride wounded.

“Prove it,” Eddie says. His eyes are bright and it reminds him of childhood. He suddenly remembers the moments Eddie's eyes would brighten up like that - when Richie amused him but he was trying not to let him know. He feels a pang of guilt that he hasn't really said much that Eddie would find funny tonight. He's shocked, though, at Eddie's next words. “Arm wrestle. Right now.”

Again, Richie feels like he’s 13 as he places his elbow on the table. He swallows thickly when Eddie’s hand wraps around his own. He fucking _hates_ this. How did he survive as a kid? Constantly around this boy, platonic touches never feeling like enough? He thinks he has much less self-control now as a 40 year old than he did as a 14 year old, because he’s not sure he can do this for too long.

He’s pushing against Eddie’s arm and they feel pretty evenly matched, and Richie thinks for a moment he might even lose. He knows he’s got more strength than this, the drinks making him sloppy, and he tries to dredge up as much muscle as he can.

And then Eddie yells, “_Let’s take our shirts off and kiss!_”

Richie’s eyes widen and Eddie’s arm falls to the table. There was a flash in his eyes, the moment the words were out of his mouth, that looked like pure panic. Richie is almost positive that panic caused the lapse in arm strength. He still throws his arms up in victory, even though Eddie’s words are playing on repeat in his mind. What the _fuck_ kind of straight guy says something like that? 

* * *

Eddie has not had alcohol in quite a while, and he wishes he had refrained tonight. The words that spilled out of his own mouth keep replaying in his head like a broken record, louder and louder, so he takes another drink to try and forget he’d said it in the first place.

He hadn’t really cared about the arm wrestling match, but felt compelled to do it anyway. It felt like it might be a fun way to interact with Richie, to maybe get their friendship (can you even call it friendship if you haven't spoken in over 20 years?) back to how it was. His mouth seems to be moving quicker than his brain tonight, though, and that’s why he doesn’t even think as he shouts, “Let’s take our shirts off and kiss!”

But the moment the words left his mouth it felt like someone had reached inside his chest and squeezed his heart. Pure panic rushed through his veins and he watched Richie’s eyes widen before he was losing the match.

Why had he said that? That’s – he’s never –

He’s hit with another memory. He thinks he was around 16. He’d been in Richie’s room doing homework. Eddie recalls feeling how restless Richie was next to him, so he’d nudged his shoulder, suggested a short break from the homework. He remembers asking Richie what he wanted to do.

And Richie had glanced over at him, stupid grin on his face and glasses falling down his nose. Eddie had started to regret asking, because that was the face Richie made before he said something about fucking Eddie’s mom.

He braced himself.

“What do I wanna do? Why don’t we take our shirts off and kiss?”

Eddie can still feel the way his breath had caught in his throat, the way he’d felt shaky and hot all over, the way his stomach twisted up into knots.

And then Richie had laughed, his own cheeks red, and said, “You should see your face, dude!”

Eddie remembers how embarrassed and shameful he felt after that comment, even though he’d never let Richie know it bothered him. He’d even rolled his eyes and told Richie to shut up, because he’d never kiss that trashmouth.

He remembers, with a jolt, thinking about kissing Richie that night as he tried to fall asleep. His heart pounds as he remembers trying to convince himself that it didn’t mean anything, it was only because Richie had said it, he wasn’t gay and he didn’t like Richie and he could stop thinking about it if he wanted to.

He’s sitting in his dinner chair trying to keep his breathing steady when Richie starts speaking, voice uncharacteristically serious.

“You guys know when Mike called me I threw up? Isn’t that weird? I got, like, nervous and I got sick and I threw up. I feel fine now, very relieved to be here with you guys…” He trails off, looking around the table. Eddie is sure everyone else is wearing similar surprised expressions to his own.

Richie looks embarrassed, and Eddie feels in his heart that it’s his job to fix it when Richie feels bad. He brushes the thought aside and says, “When Mike called me, I crashed my car.”

“Seriously?” Bill asks.

“Yeah,” he says, breathing a sigh of relief.

Ben commiserates with the feeling, and Mike tells them: “It’s fear. What you felt.” 

* * *

When Bev whispers the name _Pennywise_, Richie thinks he’s going to throw up again. He swallows thickly and listens as Eddie rasps, “_Motherfucking clown,_” before using his aspirator.

Richie thinks Eddie’s got the right idea, using something to help him breathe, because his own chest seems to be on the verge of collapsing in on itself.

“Mike,” Bill’s voice is severe. “You said you wanted our help with something. What was that?”

Richie can only hear his heart pounding in his ears as Mike begins talking, pulling out what looks like a large scrapbook. He breathes in deeply enough that he hears Mike’s next words.

“We thought we stopped it. Then, a week ago a man, Adrian Mellon, then a girl-“

The table erupts. Richie is already thinking about his flight home as their voices meld into a cacophony of sound.

Ben’s voice rises above them all: “Let him explain.”

So they do. It’s too much to process and he wants to go back in time, before Mike Hanlon called him, so he could’ve thrown his phone into a blender.

Mike finishes speaking.

“Well that shit got dark fast,” he comments, hardly aware he’s even speaking. “Thanks, Mike.” 

* * *

Eddie is panicking. His only consolation is that Richie seems to be panicking, too, if the way he just screamed at that kid meant anything. Richie’s admittance that he didn’t write his own material was a welcome reprieve from the horror show in his brain. He _was_ right!

He's vaguely aware of Mike giving Beverly Stan’s phone number as they stand in the parking lot. He can’t stop thinking about Adrian Mellon, and he doesn’t know why. Maybe it’s the memories of Bowers and his crew beating up on him and the others – an attack like that could’ve happened to any of them. And it’s probably got something to do with that boy – _Adrian_, his mind supplies him – having asthma, too. He can’t help but feel a horrible sickness when he thinks about the other boy, who watched his boyfriend get beaten up and thrown off a bridge, then killed by Pennywise. That’s the kind of thing that traumatizes a person, watching somebody you love die, knowing there’s nothing you can do to stop it.

It’s exactly what he doesn’t want to happen here. He doesn’t want to watch any of his friends die. Stan’s already gone and Eddie feels sick to his stomach that he hadn’t even remembered the other man until today.

He looks at Bev when she speaks, phone to her ear. “Mrs Uris, my name’s Beverly Marsh. I apologize for calling but I’m an old friend of your husband’s.”

Somehow, seeing Bev speaking to Stan’s wife – Stan’s _widow_ – makes him turn to Mike.

“You lied to us,” he states, his voice coming out angry and coated in fear. “That’s not okay.”

“Yeah,” Richie agrees, standing next to Eddie. Eddie’s grateful for the backup, though he thinks Richie had always been there for backup. “First words out of your mouth should’ve been like ‘hey man, you wanna come to Derry and get murdered?’ ‘cause then I would’ve said no.”

They tune back into Bev as she spoke into the phone. They watch her whisper “_in the bathtub_,” but are too far away to hear what’s being said on the other end.

“We’re all very sorry, Patty,” Bev says sadly. Eddie’s heart sinks. He’s _really_ fucking dead.

And they weren’t the first to know.

“Stanley,” he says. “Pennywise knew. He knew before we did.”

Desperately, Mike announces that they can stop it, that he has a plan.

“I got a plan,” Richie says loudly. “Get the hell outta dodge before this ends worse than one of Bill’s books. Who’s with me?”

Eddie raises his hand. The movement feels automatic, like his body is already accustomed to agreeing with Richie. He recalls being 16 fighting off images in his head and fights to push it out of his brain.

“We made a promise to each other,” Mike argues urgently.

Eddie looks to Richie, who seems to misfire for a moment before he can get his words out. Eddie understands the feeling; he’s pretty sure his own brain has been scrambled. “Then unmake the promise!”

He starts to leave and Eddie looks at his retreating back before bringing his eyes back to Mike’s. “I’m with Richie.” Mike tries to say something but Eddie stops him, fear starting to tinge with annoyance. “What? We stay? We die? That’s it? I’m gonna go back to the inn, I’m gonna pack up my shit, and I’m gonna drive to the airport. I’m sorry, man. Good luck.”

Without waiting for a response, he follows Richie’s lead and gets into his car.


	4. i've been sleeping so long in a twenty year dark night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A walk down memory lane.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> since this fic takes place in a mix of movie and book verse, i've decided to use the movie version of richie. i've never written this version of him, so i thought it would be a nice change from my normal bi!richie.
> 
> as always, find me on tumblr at [eddiesleftarm](eddiesleftarm.tumblr.com)!

When they get to the Town House, there’s no one at the front desk. Richie just shakes his head; weirder things than empty hotel lobbies have happened in Derry. 

He walks upstairs and into his room, ignoring his suitcase on the bed, and listens through the thin walls as Eddie gets his things together in the next room, seemingly muttering under his breath. Even in the midst of terror, the familiarity tugs at his heart and his lips quirk up a bit. Then his eyes begin to burn and he gasps, pressing the heels of his hands against his closed lids. He goes into the bathroom and removes his contact lenses, uncaring that they fall into the sink. He splashes water on his face and the burning disappears and his contacts have disappeared down the drain -

_down the drain like Georgie, the drain that sprayed blood on Beverly, the drains he lives in the drains_

\- so he knows he’ll have to dig his spare glasses from his suitcase. Once they’re on, he feels like he’s 13 years old again. Discomfort rips through him and he glances around the room, looking for something to distract himself. He can no longer hear Eddie, wonders if the other man has made it downstairs already. He does notice a fire escape so he steps onto it, pulling out a smoke.

When he’s done, he feels a little less jumbled so he grabs his luggage and goes downstairs. He spots Ben and Beverly but no Eddie.

"Whatever you guys are talking about, let's make it happen faster, alright? We gotta go," he says to Ben and Beverly. Then he shouts up the stairs. "Eduardo! _Ándale_!"

It's then he overhears words that send an icy chill down his spine. "You knew how Stanley died, didn't you?"

"Wait, what?" He says to Ben, walking closer to the two. He notices now that Bev's crying.

"I can't do this," she says quietly.

"She knew how Stanley was gonna die? Is that what she just said?" He asks Ben, but Ben is still focusing on Beverly.

"You can't just walk away from this," he tells her. "How did you know where he killed himself?"

Bev rings the bell at the abandoned front desk but gives up quickly, stepping around the counter to grab a key from the wall.

"Talk to me like you used to," Ben urges her, desperation in his voice. "How did you know?"

"Because I saw it," Beverly finally admits. Richie's heart is going to burst out of his chest. "I've seen all of us die."

"Kay, I just gotta grab my toiletry bag then we can go-" Eddie glances up, two suitcases with him. He seems to understand the mood has shifted. "What'd I miss?" 

* * *

He wishes he’d stayed upstairs. This isn’t a conversation he wants to be having, and he’s clearly not alone with that feeling.

Swallowing thickly, he asks, “So what do you mean, you’ve seen us all die?”

“Yeah,” Richie agrees, always on Eddie’s side. “’Cause I gotta be honest, that’s kind of a fucked up thing to just drop on somebody.”

“Every night since Derry I’ve been having these nightmares… people in pain, people… dying.” She’s been looking straight ahead, tears on her cheeks, as she’s talked, but she takes a moment to glance at Eddie. Fear grips him, because there’s something in that look, something unsaid that he’s not understanding, but before he can ask, she’s looking away again.

He breathes in deeply, trying to steady himself. “So you have nightmares. I have nightmares. People - they have nightmares! That doesn’t mean that your visions are true – “

“I’ve watched every single one of us,” she looks at him again.

“You’ve seen every one of us what?” Bill asks.

Eddie jumps at Bill’s voice – he hadn’t even realized he and Mike had entered the room.

“The place that Stanley wound up,” Bev tells him softly. “That’s how we end.”

Eddie’s skin is crawling. He looks at Richie, who’s already looking back. Then Richie glances away and says, “How come the rest of us aren’t seeing this shit? I mean, what makes her so different?”

Eddie has a flashback – momentarily sees all of them on their bikes, all of them, perhaps sans Mike, Richie asking why everyone else had seen the clown when he hadn’t. Richie’s voice, higher than it is now, asking, “Can only virgins see this shit?” even though Eddie was fully aware that Richie was just as much a virgin as the rest of them. The comment had still made him blush.

“The deadlights.”

Mike’s voice sounds distant. Eddie sees all of them again, but this time they’re there, in It’s lair, a pyramid of objects – toys? – and Bev, floating. There were other kids floating, too. Higher, though, too high to see. He remembers wondering if Georgie was floating up there. And they’d yanked Beverly down, tried desperately to wake her up and nothing was working – how did they wake her up? He shuts his eyes tight, blocks out the sounds around him, trying to picture it.

Ben kissed her.

He had believed that true love’s kiss wakes up the princess, so it did.

He opens his eyes again and Richie’s watching him, clearly concerned, but he ignores it. Beverly says something about how they’ll all die if they leave, and the tell-tale feeling of his throat closing up begins. He quickly uses his inhaler, hands shaking. A feeling spreads through his body like ice, and he thinks he understands why Bev keeps looking at him.

Whether he leaves now or stays to fight, he’s not going home. 

* * *

Richie’s memories are becoming clearer as they walk silently through Derry. He remembers how Eddie would always buy an extra ice cream for him, without even asking. And sleepovers at Stan’s house – Stan constantly rolling his eyes with a smirk because he was used to Richie’s antics. The thought brings tears to his eyes, but he blinks them away. He can’t even _think_ about Stan without falling apart, so he’s just not going to think about him at all right now. He has time to fall apart later (maybe. If he survives).

He glances at the large Paul Bunyan statue as they pass. He’d always hated it as a kid, avoiding his eyes. Abruptly, he remembers why. He can see it; he was on the bench – was he crying? He thinks maybe, he’s not sure – and then Paul Bunyan’s face was inches from his own. The memory is in flashes: an oversized axe slicing into the ground inches from where he was flailed on the ground. Pennywise. Saying – _something_. Then running, running until he was seven blocks away and he was sure nothing was following him. What had Pennywise said to him?

He hasn’t even realized he’s fallen a few paces behind the group until Eddie slows his steps, waiting until Richie reaches him and then matching his pace. Richie sighs, clenching his hands into fists. Eddie doesn’t say anything, just walks next to him. Richie shoves his hands into the pockets of his jacket, hoping to hide the way they shake if he’s not making a strong fist.

Eddie looks good, even in a stupid Polo, and he feels a wave of self-consciousness. He’s tempted to suck in his stomach, push his shoulders back, but he doesn’t. There’s no point; Eddie’s straight, Eddie’s married, Eddie’s not even looking at Richie anyway.

And it’s not like Eddie hadn’t already seen Richie at his absolute worst – he recalls sleepovers where he’d waken up with bedhead and a crease down the side of his face, swimming at the quarry, sans glasses with his hair plastered to his head, whitey-tighties sticking uncomfortably –

He almost stops walking when it hits him. It had been the first time they’d really hung out with Bev, and she’d shown them all up by jumping into the quarry when they were too chicken. The day runs through his brain like a movie, his heart racing faster as it goes on. He can remember the internal war in his head, eyes constantly drawn to Eddie who was fucking glowing, who looked even cuter with his hair wet, who was in his underwear, who was all over him, shoving his head under water with no regard for personal space.

He'd had to curl in on himself, not letting anyone within touching distance, for so long after that, trying to will away his body’s reaction. He couldn’t make eye contact with Eddie after that, even as he assured himself that the only reason he got hard was because he wasn’t used to anyone being all up against him like that. It didn’t have anything to do with Eddie, and it probably would’ve been even worse if it was a girl, if it had been Bev whose body pressed against his.

When they were out of the water, Beverly lying on her towel in front of them in just her underwear, Richie was so aware of how the other boys stared at her. He looked, too, trying to figure out what made the view so good that none of them seemed able to look away. He glanced to his side, past Stan to see if Eddie was looking at her like the other boys.

He was. But, Richie had thought, the look in his eyes was maybe more like how Richie had been looking. Confused. Trying to figure out what the big deal was. He let his eyes roam downward, taking in his best friend, and he had to look away, back to Bev – Bev who was safe to look at, who didn’t make him feel the way he just felt, flustered and excited and terrified and like he could look forever – until she glanced their direction.

He’d cried that night, he remembers. That was when he knew. He’s spent the last five years, since he stopped trying with women, searching his brain for something – everyone seemed to have a moment they knew. Or they just always knew. Richie could never think of a moment like that – he’d always thought that sex was just… Something you did. Maybe he just wasn’t into it, that was okay, some people just weren’t interested (_some people were gay_, his mind whispered) and he could be okay just living his life celibate. He didn’t feel like he was missing out on anything.

But that had gone out the window the moment he saw Eddie Kaspbrak again and realized, _oh_. Or, didn’t _realize_ – was reminded. He’d pushed his feelings down so far that he’d become okay with settling, he’d become alright with being alone for the rest of his life, and it was because he hadn’t met anyone worth the trouble. The trouble of admitting it to himself, to anyone else, to the world.

But he _had_ met someone. He’d just forgotten him.

He realizes they’re getting close to the Barrens and he glances at Eddie. He’s staring at the ground as they walk, and Richie searches his brain for something to say.

* * *

“So,” Richie says after a few moments, breaking the silence. Eddie turns to him and frowns when he realizes how much taller Richie is. “How’d your wife take it? When you left?”

“Uh,” Eddie says. She had screamed and cried, but he can’t bring himself to admit that. “She was upset, but she understood.”

Richie snorts. “You said she’s your mom 2.0 and you’re gonna tell me she _understood_?”

Eddie bristles. He hates how well Richie knows him, even after so much time apart. He feels transparent, like he has no way to keep any of his thoughts and feelings to himself. He rephrases his answer. “She was very upset.”

“Will she be okay when you get back?” Richie asks. Eddie squeezes his hands into fists because _he’s not going back_. He shrugs.

“What about you? Any girlfriend at home?”

Eddie watches his feet as they walk side by side, unable to face Richie though he’s not sure why.

“No,” Richie says with a laugh, and Eddie ignores the way it feels like relief. “No girlfriends for a while, actually. Not since college.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Richie says. “The one in college - we were together a couple years but it just never felt right, so. Never met another girl that I liked enough after that.”

“So you’re a hook-up guy, then,” Eddie forces himself to say. It’s what a best friend should say, and he doesn’t think too hard on why his stomach is in uncomfortable knots, why his pulse is pounding.

“Not really,” Richie answers, and Eddie finally chances another look at him. His cheeks are pink and he’s staring straight ahead. Eddie tries to make sense of it. Richie, who had spent every waking moment talking about sex, doesn’t have a girlfriend and doesn’t hook up with girls, either. Has he just not had sex since college? Has he-

Eddie feels like he could explode. Has he not been with women because he’s been with men? His chest tightens but he knows it would look suspicious to pull his inhaler out so he focuses on taking a few deep breaths.

He’s about to open his mouth, heart in his throat, when Mike’s voice cuts through the quiet.

“It’s right down here,” he says, pointing down into the Barrens. “I’ll lead the way.”


	5. i'm crazier for you than i was at sixteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Losers visit the clubhouse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've been reading as I post chapters, you might want to do a quick scan of the first chapter again! There are a lot of callbacks to it here.

It looks so much like it used to, and yet the effects of time are obvious in the dust, the peeling posters, the rotting wooden beams. Eddie thinks he probably spent more hours in this clubhouse than he had in his own bedroom as a teenager; once Ben had built it, the clubhouse had become a refuge for the Losers who wanted to be somewhere that wasn’t home for a little while.

When he spots the small rubber ball between the slots of wood under their feet, he’s hit so hard with a memory that it knocks the breath out of him. He leans down to pick up the ball, and the shame spreads over him slowly, starting in the burning of his cheeks and moving down, tightening his chest, tingling his fingers, causing his feet to move in small paces.

Why had he acted that way? He can remember knowing he was annoying Stan, and that it was a _real _annoyed, not the kind that Richie got where he said he was annoyed but really thought it was funny. Eddie was constantly being a jackass to his friends, talking too much, talking too loud, not listening and trying to make himself bigger than he felt in his small body.

But why? Because of the itch under his skin? That’s when the itch had started, when he was a teenager, maybe even right in this clubhouse, and it had changed him. He was always uptight, anxious, always concerned about safety and health, always ready with a comeback on the tip of his tongue. And then that changed, that feeling started, like he wanted to claw his way out of his own skin, like adrenaline racing through his veins with no where to go.

When Richie popped out of the darkness imitating Pennywise, the feeling amped up.

“Are you gonna be like this the entire time we’re home?” He bites out, relieving the feeling just a little. Richie’s face falls and he turns away from the rest of them.

“Alright,” he says in a nonchalant way, but somehow Eddie knows he’s hurt Richie’s feelings. “Just trying to add some levity to this shit. I’ll go fuck myself.”

Eddie watches his back as he steps further away, and the itch comes back worse than ever. He feels like he’s going to burst. There’s something here in his brain, something that exists inside his head that he can’t get to, like the string of a balloon that he’s jumping for but just can’t reach –

And maybe balloon metaphors aren’t the best direction to take his thoughts. He breathes in deeply, ignoring the fact that he’s probably breathing in nothing but dust mites and mold.

When Bill holds up the paint can, his heart lurches. He knows what’s inside before Bill opens it, before he pulls out one of the shower caps. He takes one for himself and he thinks it’s the one he wore as a kid – but only sometimes. He remembers taking it off, too, for some reason feeling embarrassed to be wearing it.

Richie’s returned to the group but he’s standing closest to the hatch. Eddie watches him, sees his own sadness mirrored on his face.

“He was old before his time,” Ben says about Stan, a sad smile gracing his face.

Eddie nods. “Yeah. Wonder what he was like all grown up.”

“Probably what he was like as a kid,” Richie answers. Eddie glances up at him, and Richie looks down at the ground. “The best.”

For some reason it’s those words that bring tears to Eddie’s eyes, and he pulls the shower cap over his head, to protect his hair from spiders. He looks at Richie as he does it and suddenly he remembers why he only wore his cap sometimes – because Richie had thought it was lame. Richie had nixed the idea that Eddie had originally thought was genius, and before he knew what he was doing he was pulling the shower cap off his head.

He’s brought out of his own head when Mike mentions needing a sacrifice.

“Sacrifice? I nominate Eddie,” Richie announces. Eddie glares at him.

“Wait, _what_?” His voice has an edge, the same edge it had when he was a kid, when he wanted to climb out of his body because he hated the way it felt to be himself.

“’Cause you’re little,” Richie explains as though it’s obvious. “You’ll fit on the barbecue.”

“I’m 5’9”,” he states loudly, standing and stepping closer to Richie, finger raised like he’s going to poke him in the chest. “It’s like, average height in most of the world-“

“Not that kind of sacrifice,” Mike interrupts, and Eddie deflates. Richie shoves at him a little and he shoves back, looking in the opposite direction when his lips start to twitch into a smile. He’s not really listening as Mike talks about finding their own artifacts, too aware of Richie’s body pressed against his side. Leather jacket against cotton cardigan, like they used to be Hawaiian shirt against Polo.

When they’re back outside, he says, “So where do we find our tokens?”

He expects a vague answer from Mike, but it’s not Mike who starts talking, it’s Richie. “Yeah, I gotta be honest, man. All due respect, this is fuckin’ stupid, alright? Why do we need tokens? We already remember everything – saving Bev, beating It… I mean, we’re caught up.”

“That’s not everything.”

Eddie frowns. How could that not be everything? He knows there are maybe days here and there, distinct events he doesn’t recall clearly, but he’s pretty sure he remembers the important things. He remembers –

“We fought.” 

* * *

Richie’s eye throbs for a short moment when he remembers Bill’s punch. He knows Mike is right; they fought, and he doesn’t really remember much between that day and the day they went into Neibolt to rescue Beverly.

“We need to split up,” Mike announces, looking at each of them. Warning bells begin ringing in Richie’s head, but Mike keeps speaking. “You each need to find your artifact – _alone_. That’s important.”

Richie’s shaking his head, not even sure how to tell Mike how fucking stupid this is, when Eddie beats him to it.

“I gotta say, statistically speaking, you look at survival scenarios – we’re gonna do much better as a group.”

“Yeah,” Richie agrees. “Splitting up would be dumb, man, we gotta go together, alright? We were together that summer, right?”

“No,” Bill says. “No-not that full su-su-summer.”

Richie tries to think back to the punch, the fight that left the group separated – Richie with Stan and Ben, Mike and Eddie each on their own, and Bev with Bill. He remembers going home, wiping angry tears from his face. He couldn’t get the images out of his head from inside Neibolt. He didn’t understand why the fuck Bill would want to go back – had he not seen what Richie saw? Eddie, their best fucking friend, had almost died! Pennywise was about to eat him! They could have lost him, and Bill wanted to risk losing him _again_? It was fucking stupid.

For three days he’d pouted. He could remember his mom coming to check on him, putting her hand against his forehead to feel for a fever, and when he felt fine, sending him with a few coins to the arcade. He’d sighed but knew when to take a hint, so he left. He didn’t take his bike, and he didn’t really know why until he found himself a few houses down from Eddie’s.

“I don’t have any idea where the fuck I’m going.”

Eddie’s voice rips him from the past, and he looks to see that after Bill’s reminder that they’d separated that summer, the whole group seemed to be lost on what to do next.

“Just think about what you did after you broke your arm,” Mike suggests with a shrug. Everyone starts to slowly head back, but Richie stays put, eyeing the clubhouse.

“You have to do it alone,” Mike says. Richie is aware he and Eddie are the only two that haven’t left yet, and Mike’s looking at them like a concerned parent who fears their toddler hasn’t understood the directions they’ve been given.

“Yeah, Mike, I got it,” Richie says, rolling his eyes. “I wanted to go back in the clubhouse for a minute, or is that not allowed?”

Mike sighs heavily. He speaks to Eddie next. “And I’m assuming that’s where you’d like to start, too?”

“I remembered a lot just while we were down there,” Eddie says quietly. He’s not looking at Richie or Mike, but at the hatch. “Everything’s still fuzzy, especially after I broke my arm, and I think I left some comics down there that might jog my memory.”

Mike allows it, but tells them firmly that they can’t leave together; they have to find their tokens separately. Richie nods and then makes a face as soon as Mike turns around. Eddie’s already halfway into the clubhouse, so he follows him in.

When his eyes acclimate to the dusty darkness, he sees Eddie’s already standing next to the ruins of the hammock. The crate they used to hold comics is full of ruined books but the sight is still familiar. He watches as Eddie sits on the ground next to the hammock, lightly touching the material with a focused expression. Richie thinks he’s remembering something.

Instead of bothering Eddie, he looks around at the walls, landing on the shelf where the paint can had been. There’s a circle of clean wood, dust piling up around it, and Richie finds the can and puts it back in its place. He opens it and takes one of the shower caps out, running his fingers along the elastic edge. He remembers Stan so clearly – the sound of his voice, the color of his hair, that look he’d get when he spotted a really cool bird.

He doesn’t realize he’s crying until he chokes on a sob, placing the cap back in the can and closing it. It only takes a few moments before he’s being pulled into a hug and he can’t even think about the fact that it’s Eddie holding him because the only thing his mind can focus on is that _Stan’s dead_. His very first friend. He remembers Stanley’s Bar Mitzvah and his cries turn into a laugh.

“What?” Eddie asks, pulling back from the hug. His brown eyes are wide and concerned and Richie knows Eddie has looked at him like this before.

“I just – I was remembering his Bar Mitzvah. Fuck, I wish I could remember what he said, but he went off on all the grown-ups in Derry. I’m pretty sure he said ‘fuck’ at least once. His dad tried to take the microphone from him but he –“ He paused, wiping his eyes beneath his glasses. “He kept talking. Moved where his dad couldn’t reach him. Fucking coolest thing I’d ever seen.”

Eddie’s smiling softly at him, his own eyes wet with tears. “I wish I’d been there.”

“He knew you would have if you could,” he tells him. “Stan knew that. He knew you loved him.”

Eddie sniffs and looks down at the paint can. “Why do you think he – I mean, we’re all scared, right? Why did he…”

Richie exhales heavily. He thinks he knows. He goes to where Eddie had been before and sits on the cloth that used to be a hammock. After a few seconds, Eddie sits next to him. Their legs are kicked out in front of them, hips and arms pressed together. It feels familiar.

“He had the most trouble getting over it,” Richie remembers. “Like, the whole thing just didn’t fit in his brain, you know?”

“He had the hardest time accepting it was _real_.” Eddie’s voice is quiet in the dark clubhouse. “Remember? He said it wasn’t right, it didn’t make sense. If it was hard for him to accept something so crazy as a kid…”

“Yeah,” Richie whispers thickly. “I just wish he’d come back, too.”

* * *

Eddie wants to reach over and grab Richie’s hand. It’s sitting there on his thigh, so close, and they’ve already hugged so it wouldn’t be weird. He just has the overwhelming urge to comfort Richie. He misses Stan, too, feels like a little piece of his heart has gone missing, but he knows it must be worse for Richie. He and Stan had been best friends before Eddie even met them. There was a time when they were kids that Eddie had been jealous of Stan, because he wanted to be number one most important to Richie, but it was Stanley he'd called his best friend.

He wants, more than anything, for Stanley to be here with them. But with that an impossibility, he wants to make it hurt a little bit less for Richie. They’re sitting quietly, and with a racing heart Eddie finally reaches out and takes Richie’s hand. It’s warm and a little rough, and Richie immediately squeezes back like Eddie’s hand is a lifeline. Like maybe he's reminding himself that, even though Stan is dead, Eddie is still here.

He turns to look at Richie in the dark, and something about the way they’re sitting, the way Richie’s profile looks at this angle, the closeness of their bodies, awakens another memory.

“Well,” Richie says, not recognizing that Eddie can barely breathe. “I guess we should get going. _Alone_.”

The emphasis is to make Eddie laugh, but he doesn’t. Richie is standing up and Eddie can’t move. It plays in his head like a scene from a movie: curling into Richie, whispering confessions that they never got to act on, and then Richie leaving, taking half of Eddie’s heart with him.

And then the next scene, from later that night. His mom grounded him the moment he stepped into the house but he hadn’t cared, hadn’t bothered to wipe the tears off his face as he stormed into his room and threw himself on his bed, sobbing into the pillow. Two words kept bouncing in his head, and it had taken over an hour for him to fall asleep, trying so hard to not think the two words that Richie had been able to say, that held too much truth, that he was sure he'd never be able to force out of his own mouth: _I’m gay._

And when he woke up, his eyes swollen and throat dry, more words that threatened to choke him: _I’m in love with Richie. And he’s leaving_.

The words choke him again as Richie looks down at him and asks if he’s okay. He’s holding a hand out for Eddie to take, so he does, hardly aware he’s even in the clubhouse, hardly aware he’s not 17 and in love with a best friend who was moving across the country. He looks at Richie.

“Seriously,” Richie says. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Eddie breathes, clenching his hands into fists and stepping past Richie toward the ladder. “Just… Memories.”

"Oh," Richie answers, once they're outside and walking toward the street. "Do you know where you're going?"

"Not sure," he says, heart in his throat._ I'm in love with you, I'm in love with you, I've always been in love with you_. "You?"

"Uh, yeah." Eddie glances over, sees Richie pointing toward the street that will take him downtown. 

"Guess I'll head that way, too," Eddie says with a shrug. He's trying to remember more about the time he spent with a broken arm but all he can think about is being 17 in that hammock in the clubhouse.

They walk in silence for the five minutes it takes to get to the city center, and then Richie stops outside the arcade. "Well. This is my stop."

Eddie nods. Richie goes inside and waves a goodbye to Eddie through the hole in the glass door.

Not for the first time, Eddie feels like he's lost a limb.

He keeps walking.


	6. they see right through me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Richie faces his demons, whether he wants to or not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is 100% richie and the next will be 100% eddie! i thought about intertwining their experiences but in the end i think both of them getting their moment is better. hope you enjoy!
> 
> follow me on tumblr too, i'm [eddiesleftarm](http://eddiesleftarm.tumblr.com) :)
> 
> WARNINGS for this chapter: homophobic slur, very very brief vomiting scene, richie being sad...

Richie stands inside the old arcade, heart pounding stupidly fast in his chest. He listens as Eddie’s faint footsteps fade and eventually, he's entirely alone. He closes his eyes and breathes deeply. He can do this. He’s a grown fucking man and he can fucking do this.

His hands shake as he inserts change into what is very likely a broken machine. He doesn’t know how, but he knows it’ll work. The arcade token is small but it feels heavy in his hand. This is so stupid, reliving their childhood in order to find artifacts to kill a fucking clown. He lets anger course through him steadily, because anger is better than fear, and anger is better than shame, and he aims the anger at Mike.

He turns around and glances from the front to the back of the arcade. He notices the spot that Bowers had stood, a few feet away from the Street Fighter machine. He stares blankly at the floor and wishes he was home, wishes he didn’t have to fucking do this.

A voice in his mind reminds him that he _doesn’t_ have to do this, but he quickly shakes it off. He doesn’t think about Bev saying he’d die if he left, he only knows how much he’d hate himself if he left Eddie. Because Eddie had always been the brave one, hadn’t he? Even when he was terrified he kept going, even covered in vomit he kept going, even with Pennywise looming over him, mocking him, his arm hanging at an odd angle, he’d kept going.

Richie would have shit his pants and passed out.

He finally lets himself look at Street Fighter. It’s dusty and clearly broken and damaged but he reaches out and lets his hand brush one of the toggles. He stands where he used to, on the right side, and remembers.

Eddie had been grounded. And not even like, temporarily grounded. From what he’d gotten out of Mrs. K when he knocked on the door, Eddie was indefinitely not allowed to hang out with any of his friends, because they had broken his arm and made him think it was okay to be around girls like _Beverly Marsh_ and run around deserted old houses like heathens. He remembers feeling, first, offended on Bev’s behalf, then like lead was sinking into his stomach.

Sure, they could still hang out at school, but… Eddie was his best friend. He _knew_ why it bothered him so much, the idea of not spending time with Eddie outside of school hours, but he ignored it, ignored the way his stomach started hurting all of a sudden and the way his eyes started to sting. He probably just ate something bad and got something in his eyes. He’d caught a whiff of Mrs. K’s disgusting cologne that Eddie dutifully bought her for Christmas each year, it had probably gotten in his eyes.

He headed home, trying not to think about any of it.

In the body he has now, there’s no way he could do what he had done then. He’s honestly not sure how he even managed it as a kid, but he does remember the way his arms and legs were sore for two days afterward, and how, by then, he hadn’t been able to ignore his feelings anymore.

But somehow he’d done it. The power of love or some shit. He remembers the face Eddie made when the rock Richie had kept in his pocket as he climbed the tree hit his window. It was a weird mix of shock, anger, and excitement, and he knows if his heart hadn’t already been pounding from exertion, that face would’ve gotten it going. He _felt_ way too much, way too strongly as a kid. Wasn’t as good at stuffing down his feelings, hadn’t gotten used to ignoring everything his heart and brain said to him. He’s good at it now. At least, he was, until he stepped foot into Derry.

Eddie’s eyes had been wide as he’d opened the window and held his hands out for Richie to grab.

“You gotta be quiet, my ma will murder me, Rich, she’ll fucking murder me – “

“Yeah, I got it, you gonna help me or what?”

They’d managed to maneuver Richie through the window and then Eddie had stared at him expectantly. He was holding his arm, the one with the cast, across his stomach, almost like he was cradling his own injury.

“Why are you here?” Eddie had asked finally, after Richie continued to just stare at him. He took his eyes off the cast, stark white except for the black LOSER written on it. It made his chest ache and it made him want to punch somebody, preferably the person who wrote it. Eddie realized where he was looking and had muttered, “Greta.”

“I’ll fuckin hit her,” Richie declared.

Eddie rolled his eyes. “You can’t hit a girl, dumbass. Besides, it’s fine. It should be off by the time school starts and it’s not like I’ll be doing much socializing in the meantime.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Eds,” Richie had grinned. “I’m here to bust you out.”

After some arguing (“I can’t climb down a tree one-handed, dude.” “Maybe not, but I know something _else_ you can do one-handed.” “Stop – can you stop, that’s so gross!” “Jacking off is totally natural, Eds.” “Remind me why I even _want_ to hang out with you?”), Richie remembers Eddie had agreed, and they planned for Eddie to sneak out the back door and meet Richie at the bottom of the tree. He’d climbed down, which was just as difficult as climbing up, and stood, waiting for Eddie. He’d been so worried that Eddie was going to be caught, that his mom would make his grounding even more strict somehow, that she’d decide he was sick with something and rush him to the hospital, screaming at the doctors when they would claim _no illness makes a kid want to sneak out his backdoor, ma’am._

But Eddie had come around the corner and Richie remembers thinking that the sight of Eddie made him _too_ happy. The thought hadn’t lasted long and Richie hadn’t let himself dwell on it, as they set off toward downtown. Richie remembers with aching fondness how Eddie had spent the whole walk describing his time in the hospital, how his mom tried to convince them to x-ray his entire body, _just in case_, how the doctor asked who’d tried to snap the bone into place because they had made everything ten times worse. Richie had apologized and then Eddie broke, laughing. “I’m kidding, doofus. If they could tell nobody said anything. Besides I – “ Richie can still see the flush on his face, the way he’d looked down and to the right, avoiding Richie’s eyes. “I appreciate you trying to help. With the arm and with – you know…”

Richie thinks about the way his heart had felt like it was going to burst out of his chest. How panicked he had felt as his wall fell away and all the feelings he’d been ignoring came bubbling to the surface.

So he had grinned widely and said, “You mean the whole saving your life thing?”

Eddie shoved at him with his unbroken arm and muttered something under his breath about Richie never taking anything seriously, and Richie remembers, with the most clarity of all, how he’d thought to himself that Eddie might be the only thing he’d ever taken seriously in his life.

He wonders if he’s taken anything seriously since Eddie, and feels ashamed of the years he's wasted.

But he can still picture that day, the day they spent two whole hours playing Street Fighter; Eddie had made what Richie had declared _a valiant effort_, but his cast was too bulky for him to hit the buttons. Richie had suggested that they play together, Richie on the toggle and Eddie the buttons (with his good hand, of course), but the frustration of losing four games in a row got to them both and eventually Eddie just settled in, his front pressed against Richie’s arm from behind, as he shrieked directions that Richie ignored and occasional curse word combinations that Richie laughed at.

When Eddie announced he had to leave because it was getting close to the time he took his medicine, and his mom would get suspicious if he didn’t go downstairs after his “nap” to swallow his bullshit gazebos, Richie felt the disappointment flow through him.

It’s then that Richie remembers that at some point that day Eddie had told him all of his medication was fake. He can’t picture it, can’t remember when or where, but he’s sure it was that day, because he’d encouraged Eddie to throw it all away. He had been angry on Eddie’s behalf, not understanding why Eddie didn’t seem too upset about the whole thing. He realizes now that Eddie’s mom had been more than just controlling and selfish; she was monstrous. He’s sure nowadays a mom like that could get her kid taken away for it, not receive help from the doctor and the pharmacist in tricking her child.

His anger, still throbbing in his chest, shifts from Mike to Sonia Kaspbrak.

He’s not sure why he regrets something that happened 27 years ago, but he finds himself desperately wishing he hadn’t awkwardly gone in for a hug, bumping Eddie’s cast and making them both blush bright red. He wishes he hadn’t closed his eyes for that short moment that Eddie’s arm was around him. He wishes he hadn’t watched as Eddie walked to the door and outside and he wishes he hadn’t kept staring at the door even a few seconds after Eddie was out of sight.

But he had. And his heart had raced, similar to how it is now, and his cheeks were flushed and he’d been smiling, for the first time maybe letting himself feel what he’d known he was feeling all along.

His smile had fallen quickly when a harsh voice rang out loudly in the arcade. “Tozier? What the fuck was that? You got a boner for Wheezy?”

Richie stared at Henry Bowers, mouth agape, unable to move.

Henry laughed cruelly before a hard, angry look fell on his face. “Get out of here, faggot!”

Richie had turned on his heel and noticed every other kid in the arcade watching them – watching _him_.

Even now as an adult, Richie can’t describe the way he felt in that moment. The moment that his worst nightmare came to life right in front of him. His mind was already thinking ahead, knowing Bowers would tell everyone and that Richie could deny it to the Losers but would they believe him?

Like he was in a dream, he’d stumbled across the street until he was sitting on the bench in front of the big Paul Bunyan statue.

Richie remembers how he had been a crier as a kid. Sometimes he just felt _too much_ and it happened, so he hadn't even felt embarrassed when he'd slouched, holding his glasses in his hand, and began to cry.

He steps out of the arcade, token in his pocket, and walks across the street. He’s tense, jaw clenched and hands curled into fists in the pockets of his jacket as he stops and stares at Paul Bunyan. He recalls his first solo encounter with It, and a shiver rushes down his spine as an echo of Pennywise’s laugh plays in his head.

He’s yanked from his memories when someone walks past him, shoving a piece of paper into his hands. He’s talking but Richie doesn’t hear what he says, heart pounding too loudly in his ears. He looks at the guy’s back and his stomach drops when he turns. There’s a large gash across his cheek and nose and he seems to be decaying, and even though he’s never seen him, he knows this is Adrian Mellon.

He hears what he says next.

“Hope to see you there, handsome.”

_It knew_.

He chances a look down at the paper he’d been handed and when he sees his face staring back at him, he remembers another piece of paper with his face on it under the word MISSING, but now he’s not _missing_, he’s _dead_.

“Did ya miss me, Richie?”

He jumps, his attention pulled to Paul Bunyan, where Pennywise is holding a large set of bright red balloons. He can’t move, this is it, this is how it ends, and he’s already got the proof that he’s a dead man in his hands.

“’Cause _I missed you_,” Pennywise tells him with an exaggerated frown. He gulps, starts to take a step back. “No one wants to play with the clown anymore.”

The frown twists into a sick version of a smile. “Play a game with me, would ya? How about Street Fighter? Oh, yes, you like that one don’t you?” He chuckles before he continues. “Or maybe… truth or dare?”

“Jesus,” Richie mutters, moving backward without taking his eyes off the clown. He’s started to float into the air like the balloons are carrying him.

“But you don’t want anyone to pick truth, do you, Richie? You wouldn’t want anyone to know… what you’re hiding…” Pennywise says as he moves closer and closer. Richie takes a gasping breath and takes a few more small steps backward, mouth dropping open in shock as the clown begins to sing. “_I know your secret! Your dirty little secret!”_

Richie almost falls over as Pennywise gets closer to the ground, trying to keep backing away and losing his balance as the clown repeats, “_I know your secret! Your dirty little secret!_”

He exhales heavily and realizes it came out like a whimper, and remembers what he’d done as a kid, when Paul Bunyan moved in to attack.

“This isn’t happening,” he mutters to himself, closing his eyes. “This isn’t real, it isn’t happening.” He doesn’t hear anything but it takes him a few moments to gather up the courage to open his eyes. Pennywise is there, moving so quickly he’s a blur, moving in closer. He screams and turns around to start running.

“Come back and play!” He hears, but he doesn’t turn around. “_I’ll tell Eddie!_” he sings, voice taunting.

He chokes on his breath but keeps running. Let him tell Eddie. He won’t be around to deal with the consequences. The taunting behind him dissipates enough for him to notice what’s in front of him. He keeps running, past his frozen audience, doesn’t stop running until he’s gasping for breath, holding onto the stitch in his side. He stops to breathe a few minutes from the Inn. He’s going to grab his shit and go, he’s done with this fucking town. Either he’s going to die when he leaves or he’s going to die if he stays, either by It’s hand or someone else’s, someone else who knows his _dirty little secret_.

“I’m leaving,” he announces to Ben and Beverly, shoving past them to run upstairs. He’s opening his door when he hears heavy footsteps behind him and he sighs heavily, not bothering to close it behind him because Ben would just come in anyway.

“Dude. What?” Ben asks, standing in his doorway. Richie’s grabbing his bag, already packed from his earlier attempt to flee, but when he tries to walk out of the room, Ben doesn’t move.

“I’m not staying, can you just-“ He exhales, massaging the bridge of his nose and making his glasses move. He readjusts them before he makes eye contact. “I’m not doing this shit. Somebody else’s problem.”

Ben frowns. “_Our_ problem. And if you leave, we’ll be even more vulnerable.”

Richie feels the anger return. “So what? I don’t know any of you anymore! Why the fuck should I stay and get murdered by a fucking clown because it might make a group of _strangers_ stronger?”

He regrets the words once they’re out of his mouth but he doesn’t take them back. Ben barely looks surprised; instead Richie sees nothing but disappointment.

“I know you don’t actually feel that way,” Ben says calmly. “Why don’t you stop thinking about us as strangers? If you leave, every one of us could die.” Richie’s heart clenches and he looks down. “I could die. Beverly could die. Bill, Mike. Rich, _Eddie_ could die.”

The words are a punch in the gut, both because _Eddie could die_ and because _Ben knows_. He still won’t look at him.

“What happened?” He asks, after Richie doesn’t move.

“What do you fucking think happened? I got a rerun of a show I thought was cancelled 27 years ago and I’m not about to watch it again.” He imagines Pennywise singing his song for the Losers to hear. Imagines him singing out how he feels about Eddie.

Before Ben can say anything, Richie turns on his heel and runs to the bathroom to puke.

Ben waits for him to finish, standing in the doorway of the bathroom now with his arms crossed over his chest. Richie wipes his mouth and grimaces, falling back onto his ass and letting his back hit the wall. He draws his knees up and glances at Ben. Why couldn’t he have fallen for Ben? Ben was… Ben was risk-free. Ben was _safe_. Ben wouldn’t take the heart Richie gave him and crush it in his hands. He doesn’t know that Eddie would do that, but he can still hear Eddie in his head at 13, ranting about getting AIDS from a hangnail and it’s all he needs to remember to know that Eddie is _not_ safe. Eddie is _risky_. And he’s not the one who analyzes risks for a living, but he’s pretty sure you’re not supposed to take them when every outcome looks as bad as the last.

“I think we both know there’s only one thing that’s going to keep you here,” Ben says finally, dropping his arms to his sides. Richie closes his eyes. Ben fucking _knows_. “At least… Wait and talk to him. And – and at the _very_ least, Rich, don’t leave without telling him goodbye.”


	7. if i bleed you'll be the last to know

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie finds his artifact.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long list of warnings for this one!
> 
> Internalized and externalized homophobia, homophobic slurs, violence, blood and gore, mentions of throwing up

In his mind, Eddie replays the moments he can remember from when his arm had been broken. For the most part he’d been stuck in his room, but there had been a few times Richie had busted him out of the house without his mom knowing, and he’d tagged along to the arcade. But Richie had gone into the arcade, and Eddie doesn’t think his artifact would be there, too.

The other place he visited most during that time was the pharmacy. His mother would always let him out to make the walk to the pharmacy, to pick up his pills and his aspirator. After, he’d go straight home, right back up to his room, which had become, in his mind, his prison cell. But there had been one day –

His inhaler feels like dead weight in his pocket. He thinks of his toiletries bag at the Inn, filled to the brim with pill bottles. He remembers Greta Keene, remembers learning his –

He stops walking. He had been automatically headed toward the pharmacy, somehow knowing whatever he needed to find was there, but now he knew otherwise. Because after he’d made his discovery at the pharmacy, he’d gone somewhere else. He’d run from the building, taken a hard right out of downtown, and stormed toward the makeshift baseball field by the old Tracker building.

He makes the turn now, trying to ignore the feeling of tightness in his chest. _It wasn’t real. All in his head_. He heads into the small neighborhood on the North side of Derry, where all the nicest houses are, and when he reaches the house where Tony and Phil Tracker had lived, he stops. The yard is no longer kept up as neatly as it had been back then, but the house is still one of the largest on the block. A minivan is in the driveway, and Eddie assumes somewhere over the years the house shifted from a bachelor pad for two single brothers to a family home.

His mother’s words ring in his ears as he stares at the house.

“Two men living alone and the lawn looks that nice?” She’d said, disgust in her voice. “They’re queers, Eddie. Don’t go near them.”

Eddie remembers his own response. His confusion, at only nine years old. “But Ma, they’re brothers.”

“No, dear,” Sonia had argued. “That’s what they want you to think.”

Eddie hadn’t understood at the time, but the memory brings a chill up his spine. He’s suddenly hit with another memory, this one much more recent.

“Eddie Bear, did you see?” Myra had yelped as she rushed into the house. Eddie glanced up from his laptop where he was finishing up a report from work. He shook his head. “The couple that bought the Winston’s old house! Did you see?”

“No, Myra,” he said. “I haven’t met them.”

“They’re queers!”

Eddie’s breath had hitched, and he looked back at his laptop screen without really seeing. He swallowed. “Okay.”

“Okay? That’s – That’s not _okay_! What if they have AIDS?”

“Myra,” he said, using two fingers to massage his temple. “That’s a really terrible thing to say.”

“But it’s true!” She had argued. “Eddie, do you know what they do? It’s _dirty_ and it makes them _sick_, and then they pass it on to clean people! People like you, Eddie, with compromised immune systems!”

Eddie’s stomach had tied itself into knots, and he had to swallow the feeling of his lunch coming back up. He didn’t know why the conversation was making him so upset, but he just wanted it to be over. His mother had tried to scare him about AIDS when he was a kid, but only to make sure he stayed clean._ Only dirty boys get AIDS, dear_, she’d said. _As long as you’re clean, you’re safe_. She hadn’t needed to say anything more than that; Eddie understood the message. Myra was wrong – Eddie had been clean his entire life. He’d made sure of it. Diseases that only dirty people have were none of his concern. “I’ve lived in New York since I was a teenager and I’ve never had an issue, Myra. I’m sure I’ll be perfectly fine.”

“Eddie, you’re too delicate! You need to stay away from them!”

“Why is this a problem now? What about when Nate and Paul moved in last year?”

She frowned. “Nate and Paul are brothers, Eddie.”

“No, dear,” he’d said. “That’s what they want you to think.”

The words bounce around in his head now, and he finds himself unable to keep looking at the house where Tony and Phil Tracker had lived when he was a kid. Shame fills his gut as he thinks about what he’d spent so many years telling himself – that so long as he never let himself get dirty, he would be safe. So long as he never let himself think of men, there was nothing to worry about. He’d gone so long without even realizing that he’d already gotten dirty, he’d already fallen in love with Richie. He hadn’t known that it was really his love for Myra that was dirty. Loving a man had been the purest thing he’d ever done.

He keeps walking, passing Greta Bowie’s house and recalling how convinced he had been that she was his first love. The thought makes him feel sick now. He’d decided he had a crush on her the day his mother told him the Trackers were queer.

When he makes it to the makeshift baseball field, the grass is overgrown and the fence has fallen down. The Tracker Trucking Company, right next to the field, is desolate, windows broken and door boarded up. He stops at the fallen fence and smiles to himself. He can still see the outline of each base, four diamond shaped spots where the grass hasn’t grown as high.

He can still see the pieces of cloth the boys had used for each base in his mind's eye. Tony Tracker had given them all the supplies they needed for games every Saturday morning, and even though he couldn’t play, Eddie had been there every week he could. He liked to watch, and on days where his asthma wasn’t so bad, he’d run and retrieve the balls that went outside the fence. Tony had been a boisterous man, part umpire, part coach, part over-enthusiastic dad. He was none of those things, really, but he played each part every Saturday morning with the boys who came to play ball. Derry was too small for a league, and most parents refused to drive their son to Bangor twice a week for practice, so this was all any of them had.

Eddie’s favorite player to watch had been Belch Huggins. The boy was a bully; he went around with Henry Bowers and called Eddie a queer and a fag, but boy could he hit a baseball. Eddie would watch in wonder every time the bat made contact. The sound would echo and everyone would scream and yell, though no one as loud as Tony Tracker. He would narrate the game so loudly and with such pride that you couldn’t help but smile as you watched. Once, Belch had hit the ball so hard the outer layer had come right off, landing at his feet while the rest of the ball kept going, over the fence and well into the barrens.

The day that Belch had hit that ball had been the day Eddie learned his medications were fake. He had been close to tears, unsure where else to go because he didn’t want to go home, and he’d sat down behind the fence to watch the end of the game. Tony yelled out that it was the final inning, and Eddie focused with all his might on each player swinging the bat, not letting himself think about what he’d learned at the pharmacy.

And then Belch had hit the ball so hard it broke, and Tony Tracker had screamed his head off. Eddie had watched Tony as he celebrated the hit, and thought to himself that even a dad wouldn’t be as excited as that. He wondered if it was a queer thing. The thought had left him feeling weird, uncomfortable in an indescribable way. He didn’t think it could be a queer thing, because Ma said queers were the type to keep nice lawns, not the type to cheer at a baseball game. Maybe it was because he didn’t have his own kids? Because queers couldn’t have kids, so maybe Tony Tracker looked at his little baseball team as his own sons.

_It’s dirty_, said his Ma’s voice in his head. _It’s sick. He’s diseased and he shouldn’t be near so many children._

Eddie had looked hard at Tony, but he didn’t seem sick. He seemed pretty normal. But perhaps that was what made them so dirty? That they looked just like everybody else, until they gave you AIDS through a hangnail.

There are tears in his eyes as he remembers that day, the thoughts he’d had. He thinks he might throw up, but suddenly something falls from the sky, like it had been thrown from the barrens, and lands in the middle of the field. Eddie looks around, heart in his throat, but doesn’t see anyone. With wavering breath he takes slow, careful steps toward the object, gasping when he can finally see what it is.

“Wanna play a game of catch, Wheezy? Or how 'bout a blowjob? I'll blow ya for a nickel.”

Eddie’s head snaps up, and with horror he realizes Belch Huggins is walking toward him, easy smile on his face.

Except Belch Huggins had died that summer in 1989.

It’s obvious he’s dead now. He’s limping, and through the jeans he’s wearing Eddie can see a dark spot on his left thigh where blood has seeped through the material. His skin is sallow and, Eddie thinks wildly, _dripping_ from his bones, leaving his eye sockets too wide and his cheeks too low. One of his eye sockets is empty, and his nose is eaten up the same way the Leper’s had been.

_Is the ball the token?_ Eddie wonders frantically, afraid to take his eyes off Belch. He’s walking slowly but getting closer and closer with each uneven step. What else could the token be? Eddie knows he’d ran home after his thoughts about Tony had started to scare him, but he can’t recall anything of importance, anything he could hold in his hand, anything he could sacrifice in a ritual. But the ball doesn’t have anything to do with his fear, with disease and rot and fake medication and his mother –

_Doesn’t it though?_

He watches Belch’s face begin to shift horribly. He bends down to grab the casing of the baseball from the summer of 1989 and when he gets his eyesight focused again, Belch has become the Leper.

“I’ll blow you for a quarter,” the Leper tells him, tongue falling out of his mouth and unrolling. Eddie gags; there are maggots chewing through it. A worm crawls out of the empty eye socket and finally prompts Eddie into motion. He turns on his heel and runs as quickly as he can, jumping over the fence and wincing at the sharp pain that shoots up his leg, the reminder that it’s not the summer of 1989, and his body is not 13 years old anymore.

He makes it to the street only to stop dead in his tracks. Someone who hadn’t been there a few moments ago stands on the sidewalk, staring at him. The man is Tony Tracker, who looks as though he’s been dead almost as long as Belch Huggins.

“I’ll blow you for a dime,” he tells Eddie with a grin. “Hell, I’ll blow you for free.”

He begins to fondle himself and Eddie gasps. He glances behind him and the Leper is gone, but when he looks back a blood-red balloon is floating toward him.

In white print and capital letters read the words: ASTHMA MEDICINE CAUSES LUNG CANCER! Then the balloon pops, and Greta Bowie stands in front of him. He lets out a yelp and staggers backward, and she laughs, which makes her all the more terrifying.

Half of her face is gone, and all along that side of her body is the same – like she’d taken a slide across sandpaper and lost all the skin she’d ever had. She looks to be around 18. Eddie gags again. He had no idea she had even died.

“Car crash,” she tells him, as though she knows what he’s thinking. She probably does, Eddie supposes, as he continues to take steps away from her. “Drunk and on pills. You know all about that, don’t ya, Eddie?”

She smiles and what’s left of her face twists grotesquely, and with a blink she’s gone. Eddie wildly looks around but no one is there. He’s alone. His inhaler is heavy in his pocket, and he thinks of the pills sitting in his room at the Inn. He bends over and throws up.

* * *

Ben and Bev are standing at the bottom of the stairs when he enters the Town House. He can’t look at them, his hands are shaking and he wants to be alone, to sit, to take a hit of the aspirator he doesn’t need. He goes up the stairs and into his room, leaning against the door when he closes it behind him. His mouth still tastes like vomit so he goes into the bathroom and turns on the tap. He rinses his mouth out a few times leaning over the sink. When he stands, he only has a moment to register the man standing behind him before a knife plunges into his cheek.

He turns and with absolute clarity knows the man is Henry Bowers. He’s standing there with a dopey grin on his face.

“Teach you to throw rocks, babyfag,” he says. Eddie’s eyes widen when he realizes what he’s referring to – the apocalyptic rock fight. Henry seems confused, dazed even, and Eddie uses it to his advantage, stepping into the bathtub and closing the curtain in front of him. He hears Henry make a sound of confusion and with a slow, quiet breath in, he squeezes his eyes shut and pulls the knife from his face. Tears spring to his eyes and blood fills his mouth but he stays silent against the excruciating pain. He hears Henry take a step forward, and he plunges the knife forward.

The curtain rips from the rod, and suddenly Eddie is face to face with Bowers. Not waiting, he yanks the knife back out, lets the curtain fall to the floor between them, and stabs again. Henry makes a noise like a wounded animal and tries to lunge forward, but he loses his balance and falls, landing on the tile floor with a loud thud. Before he can stand, Eddie drops to his knees and rips the knife from his chest and stabs him one, two, three more times, until Bowers is no longer struggling.

The door of his room bursts open. “Eddie?!”

“In here,” he says through a mouthful of blood. He spits it into the tub near the drain, wincing at the pain. As the adrenaline begins to wear off, the throb becomes the only part of his body he can feel.

Beverly and Ben rush in. Bev screams and Richie appears in the doorway.

“Holy fuck,” he swears.

“Bowers,” Eddie explains unnecessarily. “I uh – he stabbed me in the face. And I uh. Stabbed him back.”

“I’ll say,” Ben mutters, helping Eddie out of the tub.

Once he’s sitting on the edge of the bed, Beverly drops to her knees in front of him and with a wince, reaches out for his cheek.

“Germs!” He yelps, leaning backward. “It’ll get infected!”

“Sorry!” She says back, eyes wide and helpless. “There’s a hole in your cheek!”

“I know!”

“Marsh,” Richie says, his voice strangely calm. “You got a sewing kit?”

“What the fuck.” Eddie pushes himself farther on to the bed, trying to move away from them. “No way in hell are you sewing up a hole in my face with that. There’s gauze and tape in my toiletry bag.”

“Of course there is,” Richie laughs, and Eddie glares at his back. He returns with the gauze and tape, along with hydrogen peroxide. “Let’s get you all cleaned up, Eds.”

“Don’t call me Eds,” he mumbles, grimacing when blood spills down his chin.

“That’s fucking gross,” Richie comments. Bev smacks his arm and he shrugs.

“Let me do it,” Beverly says, taking the supplies from him and putting them on the bed next to Eddie. “Be right back.”

She goes into the bathroom and Eddie can hear the sink running. After a few minutes, she returns with freshly washed hands and a damp washcloth.

“This isn’t going to be fun,” she tells him helplessly, and Eddie nods.

When he’s patched up, he falls back onto the mattress. The metallic taste of blood is worse than the vomit from before.

“You okay?” Ben asks, standing next to the bed.

“Clearly not, dude,” Richie rolls his eyes. “He’s got a hole in his face and he just killed a man.”

“Please don’t say that,” Eddie moans, shutting his eyes. “It was_ self-defense_.”

“Why don’t you guys go downstairs?” Beverly suggests, although Eddie thinks it hardly sounds like a suggestion. He listens as Ben and Richie leave the room and the door shuts behind them. The first thing he says once they’re alone is, “Can you believe he still had that fucking mullet?”

Beverly barks a laugh. “That’s not what I expected you to say.”

“What did you expect me to say?” Eddie asks, opening his eyes to look at her. She shrugs at him. “Well. It’s been thirty years. Just get rid of the fucking mullet, you know?”

“I think you’re in shock,” Beverly says kindly.

“Belch was the Leper,” he tells her. “My token’s on the floor, I dropped it when I came in. Greta Bowie died in a car wreck, did you know?”

“No, I didn’t,” she answers.

“Mixed alcohol and pills, just like me.”

“Eddie…”

He shakes his head. “I cheat death every fucking day, Bev. Too many pills. How’d I go from sugar pills to fucking… sedatives and opioids? I’m not even – I’m not even _sick_.”

She lays down next to him, wrapping her arms around him. He lets himself be held as he cries. He can’t remember the last time he felt comforted like this. Certainly never with Myra. Not with his mother. Perhaps it had been that summer, with the losers.

“Sorry,” he says after a few minutes, wiping his face and pulling away. “It’s been a rough day.”

“Yes it has,” she agrees with a huff. “The fucking worst.”

“Bev…” He turns to look at her. He clears his throat. “How’s it going to happen?”

For a moment she’s confused, but Eddie can see the moment she realizes what he’s asking.

“Oh, _honey_,” she murmurs, tears filling her eyes.

“I saw you looking at me,” Eddie tells her. “And I think… I think I’ve known since I left New York. That I wouldn’t be going back.”

“You should stay here when we go,” she says.

“No.”

“Eddie, you’re going to die down there.”

“Tell me how, maybe I can avoid it,” he says. “We can tell the others, everyone will look out for me –“

“You die saving Richie’s life,” she cuts him off. The words die on his tongue. She’s not looking at him anymore.

“You want me to stay so I don’t die… but if I die saving Richie,” he feels bile rising in his throat again. “Fuck you, Bev. I’m going.”

“Eddie, _please_,” she cries. “He gets caught in the deadlights. It’s not even for sure that he’ll die, but it’s for sure that you will!”

“So I’m supposed to stay here and send Richie off to _maybe-not-but-probably_ die? Fuck that.”

“Eddie, I survived the deadlights,” she points out. “Maybe he will, too.”

“Not a chance I’m willing to take,” he says with finality. “Come on, they’re probably waiting for us.”


	8. help me hold onto you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Losers finally reach Neibolt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for all the comments so far on this story. i know i'm really bad about replying but i read all of them (sometimes more than once) and they make me so happy and inspire me to keep going. 
> 
> a lot in this chapter is taken from the movie and the book!
> 
> if you want to follow me on tumblr i'm [eddiesleftarm](http://eddiesleftarm.tumblr.com). come talk to me about reddie (or about this fic if you want!)

When Eddie and Beverly get downstairs, Richie is sitting on a barstool, Ben is pacing, and Mike is muttering under his breath, clearly nervous. 

"Bill's going to Neibolt," he tells them, jaw tense. "We're leaving now."

Eddie and Beverly don't question it.

They’re quiet in the car. Eddie is in the middle seat in the back, between Mike and Beverly, and his head hurts. It’s a sharp throb from his jaw up to his temple, a pulsing pain behind his eye, and he feels a little nauseous. When Richie had taken a look at his pale face as they all climbed into Ben’s car, he’d said, “Don’t puke in the car, it’s a rental.”

Eddie had furrowed his brows. “It’s _Ben’s_ rental.”

“I’m speaking on his behalf.”

Then Ben had said, “It _is_ a sentiment I share – the whole, not puking thing. Though I suppose we’re going to get it dirty after the sewers anyway…”

He'd trailed off awkwardly, and Eddie’s head pounded as he corrected Ben’s statement in his head. _We’re not going to get the car dirty after the sewers, only you guys are._ One look at Beverly had told him that she knew exactly what he was thinking.

So he focuses on breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth, keeps his eyes closed, and tries not to notice each bump in the road. It _is_ a fancy rental (though a practical one, unlike Richie's convertible two-seater), so the ride is pretty smooth, but Eddie thinks he can feel every crack in the pavement. Maybe that’s just something that happens before you die. Once you know you’ve only got a certain amount of time left, you start noticing things you might not have noticed before, like cracks in pavement.

He’s pretty sure he read that somewhere.

He’s lost in his own head and grateful for it. He would rather think of anything other than what they were about to do, what was about to happen. He wasn’t sure that he had accepted it yet, but he knew it would come to fruition. He’d make sure of it.

The drive to Neibolt isn’t terribly long, and Bill is standing on the steps when they pile out of the car. Eddie remembers Bill on the steps the same way when they were kids, except now the Losers looking up at him are different. Instead of Stan, Bev stood at his side. He tries not to think about Stan, because there’s part of him that worries if he starts to think about it then he’ll never be able to stop, he’ll freeze and curl in a ball and do nothing _but_ think about it.

A memory of Stan hits him suddenly, so hard he loses track of the conversation happening around him. He blindly follows the others through the front door, his mind a jumbled mess that he’s grateful for – the more thoughts in his head the less he’s focusing on his imminent death.

He tries instead to focus on the Stan in his head, one offering him the rest of his rocket pop on a hot summer day. Eddie is pretty sure it had been before his arm was broken, because he wasn’t wearing his cast but Stan didn’t yet have scars around his face. Eddie had asked Richie for a lick on his own rocket pop, he remembers with a flush of embarrassment, the Leper’s voice creeping into the back of his mind

_(I’ll blow you for free)_

but then he remembers Richie saying the only reason Stan was offering the last of his dessert was because Jews didn’t eat much. Eddie had been confused until Stan had rolled his eyes and told him that Richie was just fucking with him. He’d gotten onto Richie, naturally and without thinking, only to be soon mystified that Orthodox Jews didn’t eat ham or bacon.

“That’s weird,” he’d said with a laugh. “I never heard of a religion that told you what you could eat. Next thing, they’ll be telling you what kind of gas you can buy.”

“Kosher gas,” Stan had said, laughing to himself. Eddie and Richie had looked at each other, confused, but now it made Eddie chuckle. He wonders if Stan had even understood his own joke. But Richie had recovered quickly, telling Stan how weird it was that someone couldn’t eat a sausage just because they happen to be Jewish.

“Yeah?” Stan had said, looking at Richie. “You eat meat on Fridays?”

“No, of course not,” Richie had said. “You can’t eat meat on Friday, ‘cause –“ He paused, nodding and laughing. “Okay, yeah, I get it.”

“Do Catholics really go to hell if they eat meat on Fridays?” Eddie had asked, a little horrified. Even now, the thought of being sent to hell sends a chill up his spine. He looks around the sitting room of the Neibolt house and thinks to himself that maybe he’s already there.

“Well, I’ll tell you what, Eddie,” Richie had said. “I don’t really think God would send me to the Hot Place just for forgetting and having a baloney sandwich for lunch on Friday, but why take a chance? Right?”

The words had stuck with Eddie for long after that conversation. He was always terrified of going to hell, even if he wasn’t sure what he’d do to get himself sent there. He was glad he wasn’t Catholic and didn’t have to worry about what he ate, but there were so many other rules he had to follow anyway, so many other missteps he could make that could damn him straight down. Part of him had wondered if even just being sick (_fragile_, _delicate_) was enough to send him there. Sometimes he stayed up at night, worrying there was something inside him that God knew about, something just waiting to rear its ugly head, and if he didn’t work hard to keep it down that he’d end up in hell.

Sometimes, he still has nightmares about it.

He remembers his Sunday school teacher telling his class about a little boy who had taken some communion bread from the tray and put it in his pocket. When he got home he’d flushed it down the toilet, just to see what would happen, and the water bowl had turned bright red. She informed them all that it was the Blood of Christ, and it was a warning to the boy that he had done an act of BLASPHEMY, and that he needed to ask forgiveness because he’d put his immortal soul in danger of Hell.

After that story, the act of communion was terrifying for him. Reaching for the bread was an act of courage every week, one that most often left him running for his inhaler as soon as it was done. Part of him feared some obvious sign the moment he touched the bread – an electric shock, or the bread turning bright red in his hand like a blood-clot, or the voice of God thundering through the church, informing everyone around that Edward Kaspbrak was damned to Hell, that he was not worthy of Heaven.

He’d considered stealing a piece of communion bread, just to find out if the toilet water really would turn red, but could never bring himself to do it. Eddie doesn’t think he could bring himself to do it _now_, even though he no longer attended church or prayed much. There was still a piece of him that thought he was destined for hell, but he had worked years on ignoring that voice in his head. The voice that sometimes reminded him that all fragile and delicate boys go to hell.

He gets chills as he thinks about what that voice had always meant, as the realization washes over him like a bucket of cold water. Part of him had always known he was gay, that in the eyes of God he was sinning. Maybe he’s destined for hell after all.

He supposes he’ll find out soon enough.

* * *

Eddie is in his own head, barely with them, and it freaks Richie out. He keeps glancing over at him to find him with his eyes glazed over, blindly following them through the house as though in a trance. He’s trying to ignore the voice in his head warning him that Eddie’s been possessed by It or something, that this presence with them isn’t really Eddie, because he’s not sure he can handle what that would mean. Where would that leave the real Eddie? Would that mean the real Eddie isn’t here at all?

The thought sticks with him as hard as he tries to ignore it, and he knows it’s because it wouldn’t be the first time It had tricked him by using Eddie. It had always known, had always fucking _known_ how Richie had felt about him, before Richie had really even understood it himself. He remembers getting separated as a kid with Bill, heart in his throat as he realized Eddie was no longer behind them.

And then Eddie, whispering his name from down the corridor. He’d followed without thinking, calling for his best friend and entering a room against all better judgment, just because Eddie’s voice was still whispering _Richie_, peeking out from behind a clown, as though that was something Eddie would ever actually do. But fear and panic had clouded his judgment and he’d followed, only to realize he hadn’t been following Eddie at all.

He remembers the mattress right after that, Bill standing next to him, and Eddie’s head tearing through the filthy material. Richie had frozen, stomach twisting up as Eddie had, in a gargled voice, asked if he wanted to play loogie. He realizes that moment, that fake Eddie, black dripping and then pouring from his lips, was meant solely for him, not Bill. Eddie had spoken to him, had referenced their argument. It would use Georgie on Bill, but It saved Eddie for Richie.

He glances over at Eddie once again, almost afraid he’s going to see him with that same blackness in his mouth, but Eddie just gives him a tight smile, then winces and brings a hand up to lightly touch his injured cheek. Suddenly he sees them both at the same time: the image of It as Eddie, black _something_ coming out of his mouth, and the image of Eddie from only an hour prior, blood coming out of his mouth in the exact same way from a stab wound in his cheek.

Had It known?

He shakes his head, trying to pay attention to what’s happening around him now that Eddie seems to be more in the moment, more aware of their surroundings.

Ben, Beverly, and Mike split away from them and he makes sure Eddie is close by and he is, seemingly following Bill without thinking about it. They make eye contact again and this time Richie makes a face, sticking his tongue out a little and squinting his eyes, and Eddie rolls his eyes but smiles, and he counts it as a win as they step into the kitchen. It hits him immediately, the memories of the last time he’d been in this room, and it’s enough to make him feel sick. This house, this town, holds so many bad memories but Richie thinks the memory of Eddie so close to being killed was one of the absolute worst.

What had come after was one of the worst, too, watching Eddie’s mom drive him away while Eddie cried in the passenger seat. He knows Eddie had been embarrassed that they’d all seen him crying but all it had really done was make Richie even more upset about what had happened. He looks at Bill now, but none of the anger from before comes back. He thinks he can understand it, now. The desperate need, the hopeless denial about Georgie that Bill had faced then must have been unbearable.

How would _he_ have reacted back then, if it had been Eddie that had gone missing? He doesn’t think he spared a thought for any of his other friends that day in Neibolt once he saw Eddie was in trouble. Maybe it was the same kind of tunnel vision that Bill had for Georgie. He couldn’t fault Bill for loving someone so much that saving them is all that matters.

It worries him, for a moment, to realize he still feels that way. If Eddie were hurt, that would be his priority. He wouldn’t think twice about it, even though there are four others, even though they’re here to kill It. He would die for Eddie, he knows that and _has_ known that, and it scares him. It scares him that even as he tells himself he doesn’t want any of them to die, that he wants to protect all of them, there’s still a quiet voice in his head reminding him that Eddie’s the one he’d save first. The only one he’d save, if he had to choose. He doesn’t want to think about what that means about him, how selfish it makes him, if it makes him a terrible person. He loves his friends, all of them, dearly, but he knows with certainty that he loves Eddie the most. He hates himself for it, a little bit.

He looks over at Eddie again and he’s staring across the room at the refrigerator, eyes wide in horror. Richie wants to reach out for him, to do something to make him feel better, but before he can a noise breaks the silence.

* * *

Eddie can’t breathe as his eyes lock on the refrigerator. He’s 13 years old again, on the floor, arm at an angle with pain so bad it’s almost blinding, and the door is opening, slowly. It’s like his brain can’t comprehend that something so similar is happening again, because even as he sees

_oh my God, Stan, it’s Stan, oh God, no, fuck, Stan_

Stan’s face in front of him, behind his eyes he only sees the greasy white face of Pennywise, limbs unwinding until he’s taking dance-like steps in his direction. He’s moving backwards, scooting on his ass with one arm useless, taking steps on unsteady feet until his back hits the wall. He can smell the putrid stench of Pennywise’s breath in his face, can feel the heat from his gloved hands, tightly gripping him. All he feels now is the fear he felt then, the absolute certainty that he was about to die, and that it was going to be painful.

He remembers the way drool had fallen from Pennywise’s red mouth and slid down his skin, the slimy feeling it left behind, and he feels covered in it now as the spider that Stan has become advances on them. The agony of slapping and kicking when his arm was broken is like a phantom pain all over his body, and when he closes his eyes it’s because Pennywise has shoved a gloved hand over his face, turning to taunt Bill.

_it was real enough for Georgie!_

He hears Richie saying his name, both 13 year old and 40 year old Richie, and he opens his eyes. They look at each other, and it’s that moment again, Richie’s hands on either side of his face.

_“Look at me! Eddie, look at me!”_

Eddie had looked at him, had tried so hard to keep his eyes on Richie’s face instead of the clown, because in that moment he had thought with greater clarity than he’d ever thought anything, that if he had to die he wanted Richie’s face to be the last thing he saw.

And then he can’t see Richie’s face anymore, because the Spider has jumped down from above them. He’s frozen for a moment, unable to move, staring at Richie on the floor.

_You’re going to die saving him_, he reminds himself._ Is this the moment?_

He shakes his head, drawing in a sharp breath. _No_, because he was going to save him from the deadlights. He wasn’t in the deadlights right now. He wasn’t.

This isn’t the moment.

He knows Bill is screaming at him but he can’t hear the words, like his head is underwater and the sound all around him is fuzzy. He thinks it has to be adrenaline coursing through his body when he takes a running start toward Richie and kicks at the creature with all his strength. It doesn’t go far but it’s enough that someone else can take over, and he sees the flash of a knife and the dark red of blood but he looks away, drops thoughtlessly to his knees by Richie, who is sputtering with terror in his eyes.

* * *

“I can’t see,” he mumbles, chest heaving. His hands are shaking and he thinks his glasses must have fallen off his face, and he’s covered in – _something_, he doesn’t want to think about it, but Eddie is _there_, hovering over him, grabbing at his shoulders, and then Bev is by his head, helping him clean his face and put his glasses on.

“_Richie_,” Eddie says, and Richie can hear how scared he is in the tremble of his voice. He sits up, and before he can overthink it he wraps his arms around Eddie’s shoulders. Eddie falls into him, warm in his arms, and he hold on tightly, blinking back tears. He couldn’t help but think of the last time they’d been in this room, when he’d walked in and caught sight of Pennywise standing over Eddie, taunting him with fake bites to his arm. His blood had turned to ice as he had realized, perhaps for the first time, how easily any of them could die.

And then kneeling next to him, holding his face even as he continued to scream, trying to get him to look away from the clown. He hadn’t really known what he was doing, acting on some kind of instinct because things are less scary when you don’t see them coming, right? That’s why you look the other way when you get a shot. He thought, in that moment, that they were going to die. If it was going to happen, he didn’t want Eddie to be scared.

Eddie had spent too much of his life scared.

He doesn’t realize for a moment, lost in memories, that he is murmuring to Eddie, repeating, “_I’m okay, it’s okay, it’s gone_,” over and over. Slowly Eddie’s body stops shaking in his arms.

“Are you guys okay?” Bill asked, holding a hand out. Eddie pulled out of Richie’s grasp and grabbed onto Bill’s hand, standing up. Richie felt a flash of self-hatred at the jealousy that sat in the pit of his stomach when Eddie didn’t drop Bill’s hand immediately. He watched Bill squeeze Eddie’s hand before moving to check on Ben, and when he stood up he crowded against Eddie, putting an arm over his shoulders. It was a move that Eddie usually at least _pretended_ to be annoyed by, but now he just curled into Richie, clutching his shirt in his hand as they followed Bill further into the house. A tiny part of him felt hope blossoming and he tried to tamp it down. Even if they both made it out alive, Eddie had a _wife_. A few hugs and the comfort of physical affection didn’t mean he was interested in Richie at all, and it sure as hell didn’t mean he would leave his wife for him.

Unable to help himself, he holds Eddie even closer. If this is all he’ll ever get, he’s going to make the most of it.

* * *

Eddie feels Richie’s hand tighten on his shoulder when he steps closer and his chest aches with how badly he wants this to last. He’s not going to make it out of this, but he can imagine leaving Derry with Richie, never going back to Myra or New York, spending every day for the rest of his life curled into Richie’s side.

He wraps his own arm around Richie’s waist, blinking back tears as he realizes this is it. This _is_ how he’s spending the rest of his life.

He tightens his hold.


	9. i've got a hundred thrown out speeches i almost said to you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hit me up on [tumblr](http://eddiesleftarm.tumblr.com)!  
Warning for violence and blood.

For some reason, they hadn’t put much thought into what to do if the ritual didn’t work. They followed Mike, who had Bill’s full confidence, and that had been enough for the rest of them. But now they’re climbing into this rock formation, the place It landed on earth so many years ago, and as they go around burning their tokens it becomes clear to Eddie:

This isn’t going to work.

Because he hasn’t died yet.

Just the thought makes his throat close up and he chokes on air, but then he looks over at Richie. Richie has something in his closed fist as they listen to Ben talk about his yearbook page, and he’s looking right back at Eddie. Their eyes lock, and Richie raises a brow and shrugs, because there's nothing either of them could say to make this moment easier. The ritual is set in motion, and they just have to ride it out and hope for the best.

Eddie can’t hope for the best when he already knows the worst is coming. He wonders how Bev feels, because she must know, too, but she seems too caught up in Ben, the yearbook signature, and the poem to pay mind to what’s about to happen. Eddie is struck with an ugly feeling, and he at first thinks it’s anger. But he watches the small, private smile that Beverly and Ben share and he realizes it’s jealousy. He’s _so_ envious that Beverly and Ben are going to walk out of these sewers together.

He realizes with a flash of horror that when Beverly and Ben, along with Mike and Bill, exit the sewers, Richie will be with them. For the first time he doesn’t think about not getting to leave with his friends; suddenly he can only think of Richie having to leave without him. It causes an ache that sits heavily in his chest as Richie tosses in the coin from the arcade. Everyone turns to Eddie.

He takes the baseball covering and tosses it into the flames, before remembering Stanley’s shower caps and throwing those in too.

“What was that?” Eddie glances to Bill, so lost in his own head that Bill gestures to the fire. “What was your token?”

“Oh,” Eddie says, looking back down. “Uh, part of a baseball.”

There’s only silence, so Eddie looks up to see his friends staring at him in confusion.

“Care to elaborate?” Richie suggests, smirking, though he doesn't look amused.

“_You_ didn’t say shit about _your_ token,” Eddie responds with a frown. Richie immediately looks away, muttering under his breath. Eddie sighs.

“You don’t have to tell us,” Mike says, looking between the two of them. “Anyway, we should begin.”

* * *

Richie’s never felt so much anger in his life as he and Eddie run through a tunnel with a huge tentacle attached to Pennywise’s face lashes around behind them. They reach a circular space, and Richie thinks they might be back in Neibolt because the three doors are back. A tentacle comes rushing toward them and he yanks Eddie back by the arm but the sharp claw stops about a foot away from them. He feels Eddie sigh in relief; it can’t reach them here.

“We’re stuck here, there’s no way out, we’re going to fucking die down here,” he mutters, staring at the doors that read Not Scary At All, Scary, and Very Scary. “I’ve done this before, the door’s a fucking trick, me and Bill saw Betty Ripsom – the top half of her anyway – in Not Scary. He’s fucking with us, there’s no right answer, oh God –“

“Stop!” Eddie says loudly, reaching up to put his hands on Richie’s shoulders. He shakes him a bit until Richie is looking him in the eyes. “You looked in Not Scary last time? We’ll look at Very Scary this time. You’re right, it’s a trick, so maybe the doors are labelled backward.”

“Or they’re labelled just to fuck with us because everything behind every door in this entire fucking place is _very scary_!”

“Yeah,” Eddie agrees with a shrug. “But we don’t have many other options.”

“Alright, let’s just –“ he stops, runs a hand through his hair. “Let’s open the fucking door.”

Eddie is the one to reach out and turn the handle, and when the door opens all he sees is darkness. Eddie must see something, though, because he reaches inside and pulls on a string. Richie doesn’t understand at first, but quickly his stomach drops and he wants to puke, because he’s staring into a closet.

_Very funny, fucking dumbass clown_, he thinks hysterically.

He glances to Eddie to see if he understands, but Eddie looks just as horrified as he does. For a moment he wonders if maybe Eddie is seeing something different, something that represents his own hidden fears, but then the sound of slow footsteps comes from deep within the closet and grows louder and faster until the bottom half of Betty Ripsom is running at them. Richie slams the door shut with a scream.

“Okay, fuck, you’re right,” Eddie says, eyes wide. His face has gotten paler, and Richie can’t tell if it’s from fear or blood loss from the wound in his cheek. “Should we try Not Scary?”

“I mean, it’s like you said, we don’t have many other options. We can go back in the tunnel and get fucking skewered by Pennywise the Dancing Spider-Crab Clown, or we can see if we can get through one of these doors.”

“How did you and Bill get out, when we were kids?”

Richie pauses and thinks back on that day in Neibolt. He and Bill had tried the Not Scary door and found Betty Ripsom asking for her shoe, but then… Did they close that door? Run past her? Try another door? He tries to remember but he can’t, the next thing he can recall is standing in the entrance of the kitchen, watching Pennywise attack Eddie.

“I can’t _fucking_ remember,” he says angrily, kicking at the dirty ground and watching a few small rocks fly into the air and hit the wall. “I just remember finding you, I don’t remember –“

“Okay,” Eddie answers, holding a hand up. “That’s okay, we can – we can figure this out. Let’s try Not Scary, maybe he flipped them back again because he knew you’d remember the trick.”

Richie wishes he could believe him but he doesn’t. He’s not sure how Eddie seems so positive that there’s an answer here, because he feels like this is _it_; they’re going to be stuck between a rock and a hard place and they’re going to die.

Richie doesn’t _believe_ Eddie but he _loves_ him, so he opens the door only to see darkness again. But then Eddie’s grabbing his arm and pointing down, and when he follows his gaze he’s looking at a small dog. He briefly recalls making a joke about It showing up in the form of a Pomeranian and apparently Pennywise finds himself absolutely hilarious, because _here ya go, Rich, here’s your fucking Pomeranian!_

“Oh,” Eddie says. “It’s cute.”

“Yeah,” Richie agrees, tilting his head a little. The dog is just standing there, staring at them. His heart is in his throat as he waits for something to happen, but nothing does.

“I’m not scared of you!” He shouts at it, as though he can trigger an attack just so this moment of anticipation can be over. The dog doesn’t react.

“Aw, look,” Eddie coos. “Maybe it really is just a dog! Rich, make it sit.”

“Sit.” Richie uses a Voice saved for babies and small animals, and the dog sits. “Oh, look, it did it!”

“You’re very cute, aren’t you?” Eddie asks the dog in a high pitched voice. Richie can’t help but find it adorable. He can imagine Eddie with a small dog, using that voice every time he speaks to it, apologizing when he accidentally steps on its tail or telling it goodnight and good morning.

His fantasy is interrupted when the dog morphs and loudly growls. It happens too quickly for his eyes to even register what he’s seeing before they’re both slamming the door shut, breathing heavily.

“Fuck, I’m never gonna look at a Pomeranian the same again,” he mutters, hands on his knees as he tries to steady his breathing. Once he’s able to take a breath without his chest screaming in pain, he stands up straight and looks at Eddie, who’s staring into the dark tunnel. “So, Scary door?”

Eddie looks at him like he’s got three heads. “Are you fucking kidding me? After what came out of the first two? No! Let’s just – Look, It’s not in this tunnel anymore and I can – I think I can hear the others, maybe they made it back to the cistern and we can all group back up, we can…”

Richie nods. They grab hands and slowly walk into the tunnel, the cistern a very dim light up ahead. Richie focuses on the feeling of Eddie’s hand in his; both of them have sweat and dirt and grey water all over them but their hands are warm where they're clasped together, and it feels like that point of connection might be the only thing anchoring Richie to this moment.

Behind his eyes, he suddenly sees another time that Eddie’s touch had anchored him to a specific moment and it makes his breath catch. He can see it in his head – Eddie sitting next to him on the hammock, tears on both of their faces. He realizes it was right before he’d moved. Eddie’s face so close – Eddie’s nose against his temple, his breath against his cheek, and they had –

Had Eddie come out to him? The words they said to each other are fuzzy, like he’s got cotton in his ears, but something in him is _sure_ they had come out to each other. He wishes his brain could unscramble the memory faster, could make that moment in time clearer in his mind but he can’t grasp it, and then Eddie squeezes his hand before letting go, because they’re back in the cistern and the large spider with sharp claws and the face of a clown is stomping around. He sees Mike out of the corner of his eye and the anger hits him again, hard, because this is Mike’s fault. Mike lied about the ritual. Mike called them back to Derry in the first place.

But he's still one of Richie's best friends, and he doesn’t deserve to die. None of them do. So he takes a final step out of the tunnel and picks up a rock.

* * *

Eddie watches in horror as Richie picks up a rock and throws it at Pennywise.

“Hey fuck-face!” He yells. Eddie can’t breathe. “Wanna play Truth or Dare? Here’s a Truth: You’re a sloppy bitch!”

Eddie chokes on a laugh, even as his body fills with more fear than he’s ever felt. Richie is still screaming nonsense, throwing rocks, and Eddie loves him _so fucking much._ For a moment it feels like it’s pouring out of him because his body can’t contain how much he loves this man. Nobody else would call a fucking evil space entity a sloppy bitch. Nobody else would hold his cheeks and make sure his face was the last thing Eddie saw. Nobody else would coo over a dog that so clearly was about to attack them with him.

The feeling in his chest is light and airy even as he faces his death and he wonders how the hell he ever thought he was in love with Myra. He's never felt anything close to this for anyone but Richie.

Richie, who is now floating in the air, eyes white.

“_No_,” he cries, taking a step closer and then stopping when he sees Pennywise looking around. This is it. He stares at a claw, so sharp, and he knows with absolute certainty, somehow, that one of those claws is going to kill him in a matter of moments. He feels sick, and he wants to turn around and run so badly. Ben and Beverly appear across the way and with tears in his eyes he locks his gaze with Beverly. She’s just seen Richie, and there are tears in her eyes, too.

Without thinking, he pulls a fence post from where he attached it to his backpack. His hands are shaking as he steps into the cistern. He looks at Richie again, his heart aching. He hopes, desperately, that he gets a chance to talk to him one more time before he dies.

"_This kills monsters_," he tells himself, clutching the fence post. "_This kills monsters if you believe it does... If you believe it does_."

Then he sees Pennywise with an open mouth and screams, “_Beep beep, motherfucker!_” before launching the fence post into the air. He watches as it pierces the back of It’s throat. His heart lurches as he watches It fall backward.

He rushes to Richie, who is on his back on the rocks, and he leans over him.

“Rich?” He asks, patting his cheek. His eyes are still white. He looks over his shoulder but the spider is quiet behind him. Had he done it? He doesn't think so, but the place where the spider had stood was still. Maybe It was somehow going to kill him from beyond It's own grave. “Rich, I think I did it, I think I killed it!”

Richie doesn’t move and he begins to panic. Had he not saved him after all? Had he gotten himself killed only for Richie to be lost to the deadlights forever?

“_Richie!_” He shouts desperately. Richie’s eyes finally flutter open, and Eddie almost collapses in relief. “Rich, I think I did it! I think I killed –“

It happens quickly. The first thing Eddie actually notices is the taste of blood filling his mouth for the second time today. He looks at Richie beneath him. There’s blood everywhere, and his brain only takes a second to process that the blood is his own. He sees more than hears Richie say his name.

“Richie?” He breathes, hands moving toward his chest. He finally looks down to see one of It’s claws protruding from his chest. His mind is hazy, like he’s in a dream, and he can’t really feel anything, and he’s staring down at Richie. He thinks maybe this could be a good way to die, as long as Richie doesn’t move –

And then searing pain shoots through his back and chest as he’s yanked into the air. His eyes close and when he opens them he’s face down against the rocks and his mouth is spilling blood onto the dirt. He _hurts_, pain worse than anything he’s ever experienced, but then there are hands on him and he’s moved carefully so that he’s sitting against the wall. He sees them all standing around him, but mostly he sees Richie. Richie is right in front of him, pressing something against his chest.

“_Rich?_” He coughs, spraying Richie with more blood. Richie chokes on a sob and Eddie wishes he could hold him, wishes he could do something to make this easier, because he knows he’s going to die and Richie is going to have to leave without him. He’s dying for this, and he _needs_ Richie to be okay.

“Hey, you’re okay,” Richie promises, though they both know he's lying. He’s grimacing, but Eddie thinks it’s an attempt at a smile. “You’re fine, Eds, no worries, we’re gonna get you outta here –“

Pennywise is yelling somewhere but Eddie isn’t bothered to look. He’s not even sure where they are, and he doesn’t care because he’s looking at Richie’s face, streaked with tears but still so, so handsome.

“I’m not –“ he chokes and wipes blood from his mouth. Richie’s hands are on him, holding him up. He brings up a hand and rests it on Richie’s arm. He grips the best he can. “I’m not gonna make it but you – you have to. Rich, you _have_ to.”

“No,” Richie shakes his head. “I’m not leaving without you, I’m _not_.”

_“Richie, come on, we have to –_“

“_I’m not fucking going anywhere!_” Richie bellows at someone behind him. Eddie can’t tell who it is. It feels almost like tunnel vision, like Richie is the only thing he can see or hear. Like he only has so much energy left in him and he’s using all of it to focus on the man in front of him.

“Rich?” He mumbles, bringing his hand from Richie’s arm to his cheek. His palm leaves blood on Richie's skin.

“Yeah, Eds?”

“Remember the night before you left?”

Richie whimpers and lets his forehead fall against Eddie’s.

“Yeah, I do.”

Eddie coughs and Richie presses something - his jacket, maybe - harder against his wound. It still hurts, but the pain has dulled enough that he can look at Richie, cup his cheek and do his best to smile. He shivers, suddenly feeling cold. He tries to memorize the feeling of Richie's stubbled cheek beneath his palm, the exact blue of his eyes, the tenderness of his touch.

“I wanted to kiss you... before we left the clubhouse. 'm sorry I - sorry I didn't.”

He knows it’s the last thing he’ll ever say, and that Richie’s face is the last thing he’s going to see. He thinks, not for the first time, that if he has to die, he wants it to be like this - holding onto the person he loves most.

“It’s okay, Eds,” Richie cries, pressing a kiss to his cheek. Eddie takes a shallow breath. “I wanted to kiss you, too. Always did, still do.”

He closes his eyes and listens to the sound of Richie’s voice. He wants to nod, to let Richie know it was something he still wanted, too, but he can't do anything but take one more shaky breath.

“_I’m so sorry, Eds_,” he hears faintly, and then even fainter, “_Please – please don’t_ – _I’m so sorry…_”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter coming soon!


	10. remember how i said i'd die for you?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The final battle.

“Eddie?”

Richie’s hands shake as he cups Eddie’s pale face. The other man doesn’t move. His eyes stay closed, his chest unmoving.

“Guys! Help me, we gotta get him outta here!”

He holds Eddie tightly to his chest, hardly aware of the tears falling down his face. He cradles the back of Eddie’s head, cries into his shoulder, then rests him gently against the wall of the cavern.

“Eds, _please_,” he whispers roughly, as the first rocks begin to fall. He looks to the others. “HELP ME!”

“Richie,” Beverly says, tears streaming from her eyes. She’s holding onto Ben like she’d collapse without the support. Richie can't look at them, not now when he feels like he’s collapsing without his own support. “Honey, he’s dead.”

“_He’s not dead!”_ He cries, turning back to Eddie. “He’s just hurt! We gotta – guys, please, we’ve gotta get him help, we can help him, we can’t –“

“Richie, the place is coming down, we need to go –“

“I’M NOT FUCKING LEAVING HIM HERE!” He screams, still holding onto Eddie. “It’s – it’s fucking dark and he’d – he’d hate this, he doesn’t – _please_, we can’t –_ help me_ –“

He feels hands grappling at his arms, hauling him up and he struggles, screams escaping his mouth. He feels one of his elbows dig into soft skin and tries to break away but he’s being yanked backward, pulled away from Eddie, feet off the ground as he kicks in resistance. He can’t breathe, can’t think, but he yells, curses these people for pulling him away, screams Eddie’s name.

The farther away they get from the collapsing cistern the more Richie’s body feels like it’s shutting down. His throat is raw and when he screams his voice comes hoarse until it won't come out at all. Then his chest is heaving and he’s not getting enough air, not getting _any_ air, his head is pounding but he feels like he’s spinning, light as air, so dizzy he could puke, and he barely notices when he’s dropped on the asphalt outside the house. He can’t open his eyes, he tries but the energy isn’t there, isn’t even there to lift a finger.

The sound of destruction around him whizzes in his ears until it doesn’t.

* * *

The ground beneath him is hard. Rocks with sharp edges dig into his back, and he shifts in discomfort. He draws in a deep breath and it feels like his first in a long time, and though he knows that can’t be true he still thinks it, that this is his first breath, because he is lying on his back breathing, even though he is dead.

“Eddie?”

He opens his eyes and blinks against the harsh light. He gasps when he sees Beverly, crying as she leans over him.

“Bev?” He says blearily. “What? I don’t –“

“Deadlights,” she tells him, wiping tears from her cheeks and smearing a concerning amount of blood around. She must notice Eddie’s horrified look because she says, “Long story, not my own blood.”

A loud roaring interrupts them and Eddie turns to see the spider with Pennywise’s face, and he looks down to see no wound in his chest. He feels his chest with his hands, some part of him expecting a hole, but nothing is there. No wound. No wound, and he is alive.

“I don’t – Bev, I _died_, I don’t –“ His chest is heaving as he tries to take deep breaths.

“When you threw the fence post,” Beverly says, “Right before it hit he looked at you, you got – it was like you were in the deadlights for a _second_ and then you weren’t – you were barely off the ground before you fell.”

“I hit it?” He asks, and then he realizes the spider is thrashing wildly, yelling loudly about killing them all but somehow Eddie knows It’s weakened. And then a flash of ugly mustard yellow in the corner of his eye and he’s on his feet before he fully comprehends what he’s seeing. “Richie!”

“No, Eddie!” Beverly cries, and her arms wrap around his waist from behind. They tumble to the ground and Eddie screams, he needs to get to Richie, he needs – “Eddie, you’ll die!”

“But –“

“Ben’s getting him!”

Eddie stops struggling and notices Ben, covered in dirt, running past a flying claw and heaving Richie up under his arms, pulling him to the relative safety of a small cavern. Eddie rushes that way, jumping when a claw lands sharply on the ground where Richie had just been.

That was supposed to be him. That was supposed to be his death.

He doesn’t let himself think on it too long, and when he gets to Richie he realizes his eyes are still white.

“He’s not –“

“He’ll wake up,” Ben assures him, though he doesn’t sound confident.

Eddie drops to his knees and crawls to Richie. He ignores the hot tears on his cheeks as he presses their foreheads together and closes his eyes.

“C’mon, Rich, you gotta wake up,” he urges, hands on his shoulders. “You have to – remember? That last day in the clubhouse? You gotta wake up so we can talk about it, okay? _Please?_”

He slaps his face a little but Richie doesn’t stir. He curses, then pulls Richie into a hug. Richie's body moves as though he's lifeless and Eddie lets go, runs his hands through dirty hair instead.

"Please wake up," he murmurs. "Rich, _please_ -"

He’s not paying attention to anything else until Mike is hauling him up and away from Richie. He looks back at him, slumped against the wall with wide, white eyes, and feels his entire body thrum with sudden anger.

“-make it small, we can lure It into the tunnels –“

“It’s not going to follow, will It? We can’t –“

“What's that mean, _make It small?_” Ben asks, interrupting Bill and Beverly.

“It’ll be easier to kill if It’s small, right? We’re not going to beat a giant monster but we can kick the shit out of a little one,” Bev says with a hardened stare. “So It’ll have to shrink to follow us into the tunnels –“

“But It won’t, It didn’t follow me and Richie,” Eddie says, thinking about their trip through the tunnels before the deadlights. He racks his brain for ways to make It small, places to lead that are too small for giant monsters, but he is so preoccupied with thoughts of Richie, the way Richie had felt like dead weight, that his mind is blank. Maybe he shouldn’t even be here – his purpose had been to die saving Richie. Whatever happened in that alternate timeline, Richie is the one that was needed to win. Eddie had fucked that up, surviving, and now Richie’s stuck in the deadlights and Eddie’s too fucking stupid to figure out what to do. He wonders why he ever thought he could do this. He can’t do this, he’s not strong enough, brave enough, he’s –

_delicate_

His mother’s voice in his mind says the word.

_you’re too delicate, Eddie_, she tells him. y_ou should’ve listened to me, you’ve got a weak system, you can’t handle this_

“What if we make him feel small? Instead of literally shrinking him?”

They all turn to face him. Eddie groans, suddenly wishing he hadn't spoken because now it feels like a stupid idea. They keep looking at him for an explanation, so he sighs. “I just – You can make someone feel small… with words. Right?”

Bill stares at him, head cocked, and Eddie shrugs helplessly.

Then Bill turns to the spider, to the laughing face of Pennywise the Dancing Clown, and screams, “YOU’RE JUST A FUCKING CLOWN!”

The next few minutes pass in a blur of insults from each of them, as Eddie yells that It is nothing but a weak leper, an ugly clown, a clown, a clown, a clown.

He doesn’t flinch when they squeeze the heart, but the moment It dissipates into nothing, Eddie runs for Richie. He can hear the footsteps of the others behind him, but the only thing running through his mind is a prayer that Richie is still alive. Hopefully awake, but most importantly still breathing.

He is.

His eyes are still white and Eddie yells in frustration, kicking at the ground and watching dirt and rocks fly into the air. It’s then that dirt and rocks begin falling from above their heads.

“We’ve gotta get out of here,” Bill says, as they all duck into the cavern. “This place is gonna come down any minute.”

Eddie kneels down, draping one of Richie’s arms over his shoulder and looking at his friends for help. Ben takes Richie’s other side and they stand, lifting Richie with them. Eddie sags under the weight; he’s a good three inches shorter than Richie, and probably wouldn’t be able to lift him on a good day. A scream rips from his throat when he realizes he can’t do this, he can't be the person to carry Richie out, and without words Mike replaces him. They rush through the tunnels and into the house, and Eddie can’t stop looking behind him to make sure Ben and Mike still have Richie, that they're still right behind him. They all rush out the front door, down the steps, and don’t stop until they’re in the street, past the fence. Ben and Mike set Richie down gently, and Eddie leans over him.

“Rich?” He says, patting the side of his face. “We killed it! For real this time! You gotta wake up though, okay? You have to wake up.”

Richie doesn’t wake and Eddie glances upward, trying to keep more tears from falling. He’s so _fucking_ sick of crying.

He notices the others are watching the house, and when he turns his head to look, the very last of the rubble comes crashing down to the ground. The dust takes a moment to settle, and then everything is still.

“_He’s in there, we left him in there, we can’t leave him in there!”_

Eddie jumps, his head whipping toward the sound of Richie’s distressed voice. He’s sitting up, eyes wide, absolutely terrified. Eddie moves into his space and grabs either side of his face to hold him still. Richie’s breath hitches when their eyes meet.

“Who’s in there?” He asks quietly.

“_Eddie?_” Richie croaks.

“Yeah, it’s me,” he says. “You were in the deadlights but the place started coming down when we killed It so we dragged you out.”

Richie doesn’t say anything. His eyes are wet and he looks at Eddie like he’s some kind of miracle.

“You’re real?” Richie finally whispers. “You’re alive?”

Eddie sniffs, nods his head, and then Richie is surging toward him, wrapping his arms around him and crying into his shoulder. He hears the footsteps of their friends, each of them stepping away as Richie holds tightly to Eddie. They don’t move for what feels like hours, even though the asphalt beneath their knees digs into their skin, even though they’re covered in grey water and blood, and Richie keeps whispering into Eddie’s shoulder, like a mantra, “_you’re alive, you’re alive, you’re alive,_” like he can’t believe it.

Eddie doesn’t have to ask what Richie saw in the deadlights; he knows that they had seen the same thing, the same _horrible_ thing, so he just closes his eyes and holds on tight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Hope you're still enjoying :)


	11. saying goodbye is death by a thousand cuts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was meant to be the last chapter but things got away from me. expect the actual last chapter soon!

Richie lets his head fall back against the wall with a solid thunk as he watches hoards of people walk by in various states of urgency. He’s on the floor in the terminal that Eddie will be flying out of, listening to Eddie complain about the guy who worked at the rental car place. He’s mostly tuned out, still exhausted from the fight three days before, but it’s nice to just sit together, with hours stretching ahead of them before Eddie’s flight leaves.

“-cleaning fee my _ass_,” Eddie is saying, annoyed. Richie lets his eyes roam over to him. He’s sitting with his legs crossed and folded, and it reminds him of elementary school, the two of them on the magic carpet next to each other sitting criss-cross applesauce. He’s about to say something when Eddie’s hand, in a chopping motion, flies into his vision. His eyes catch on the ring, situated on his fourth finger.

Eddie stops talking. They haven’t talked about it, but Richie’s pretty positive he and Eddie saw the same thing in the deadlights. And it’s great, it fills him with butterflies to know that Eddie had felt the same way all those years ago, but it also feels like a knife to the chest. Because Eddie does not feel that way anymore.

“You’re flying into LAX, right?” Eddie asks suddenly. Richie wonders if it’s meant to distract him from the visual representation of Eddie’s rejection.

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s still about 45 minutes from my house but…”

He shrugs awkwardly, shoulders sliding against the wall as they move. He chances a look at Eddie’s face and realizes Eddie is staring at his own hand, the ring glinting in the fluorescent lighting.

“I can’t decide if I should take it off before I get there or after I tell her.”

“What are you talking about?” He asks, his own eyes glued to Eddie’s finger. He clenches his hands into fists, fights against the hope building in his chest.

“My wedding ring,” Eddie says. Richie’s breath hitches. “What do you think?”

“Take it off,” he answers without thinking. Eddie laughs a little before sliding the ring off his finger. It feels like a weight being lifted off Richie’s chest as he watches Eddie drop it carelessly into his carry on. When he finally makes eye contact, Eddie is already looking at him, smiling, his brown eyes glowing.

* * *

Eddie’s hand feels different, without the ring. Better. He’s terrified of getting home, having to tell Myra he wants a divorce, but he still can’t stop smiling. Richie’s brightened up, too, laughing loudly and constantly reaching over to playfully shove or poke or anything, really, any excuse to touch.

The time passes quickly, and before he’s ready, his flight begins boarding. He and Richie stand facing each other, bags on the ground next to them, and Eddie feels helpless as he looks up into blue eyes. He wants to just leave with Richie, but he knows he has things to take care of at home. A job, a house, a wife. He’s not sure who reaches out first, but he finds himself clinging to Richie’s back, their arms wrapped tightly around each other. His face is buried in Richie’s neck and chest, and he fights back tears. He leans up on his toes, moving his arms to link around Richie’s neck, and finds his nose pressed against a lightly stubbled cheek. Richie’s glasses press against the bridge of his nose but he ignores it, pushing closer until his forehead is resting against Richie’s temple. He can hear Richie’s sharp intake of breath in his ear and it’s so reminiscent of that moment in the clubhouse, 17 years old, when he’d wanted so badly to shift just a little, wanted to kiss him more than he’d ever wanted anything in the world. It lights him up inside, knowing now that Richie had wanted that too. 

He’s almost positive Richie feels the same now – he’d admitted as much in the deadlights – but he’s not sure if it’s something he wants to actually act on. Saying you want to kiss someone is a lot different from saying you want the entire trajectory of your life to change so that you can be together. And that’s what Eddie wants – he wants things to change, he wants to be wherever Richie is – but he’s not as sure about Richie. Richie’s entire career hinges on his comedy, and his comedy hinges on his heterosexuality.

Eddie loosens his hold first. He keeps a hand on Richie’s shoulder, making sure he doesn’t move too far just yet. Eddie can see his eyes are a little wet, too. His eyes search Richie’s face for some sign of what he wants, and it’s so plain to see that he wants the same thing. Eddie is ready to get on a plane and upend his entire life, and somehow he can see in Richie’s eyes that he is, too.

They don’t say anything, but Eddie’s eyes follow the movement of Richie’s tongue when it darts out to lick his lips. It’s a nervous habit, Eddie knows, but it stirs something hot inside him, and he just _wants_, so badly.

He lifts onto his toes and connects their lips.

Richie makes a noise against his mouth and the kiss is over as fast as it started, but Richie is gripping his waist like he never wants to let go. Eddie doesn’t want him to, but he knows he’s close to missing his flight and needs to leave.

But it doesn’t have to be goodbye, he thinks, as he cups Richie’s face in his hand and brushes his thumb against his cheek. It can just be a see you later.

* * *

Richie wonders why he ever thought it was a good idea to buy a large house. The emptiness haunts him to his bones, keeps him cold and _so_ aware of how lonely he is. It was like the warmth on his lips from Eddie’s kiss had vanished the moment he stepped in the front door, and he can’t even feel the ghost of pressure anymore.

It’s been two days since he’s been home, and he’s still too afraid to ask what it meant. Eddie had kissed him, so incredibly briefly, said a quiet, “see you,” and left to catch his flight. He’d texted when he made it to New York, texted general good morning and good night messages, and Richie had no idea what to say to any of it. He had responded to the first text to let Eddie know that he’d made it home, too, and didn’t mention that home didn’t really feel like home anymore. He’d sent the same “good morning, eds” and “night, eds” both days and neither of them had said anything else.

He wants to be brave enough to call, to ask what the kiss meant. To ask if he was really going through with leaving his wife. To ask what he was doing about his job, his house, his life. He wants to tell him that he feels empty without him, that he doesn’t care if it’s LA or New York or Chicago or Seattle or anywhere, as long as Eddie’s there it’s where he wants to be, too. He wants to tell him that, despite the forgetting, he’s somehow never stopped loving him over the past 27 years.

Instead, he heats up a microwave dinner from the freezer for lunch and mindlessly watches TV, phone on the side table by the couch, volume up in case Eddie decides to text.

When his phone goes off, he jumps for it, deflating when he sees it’s just his manager. Knowing he’d just keep calling multiple times a day until Richie finally answered, he decides to pick up the phone.

“Hello?”

“What the fuck, Rich?” Steve says angrily. Richie brings a hand up to his head, rubs at his throbbing temple. “Where have you been? You just fucked off, man! We had to cancel tour dates, do you know how much that costs? You’re so fucking lucky I’m even giving you a chance to explain, I could’ve already fired your ass.”

“One of my best friends killed himself,” he blurts. Steve’s voice stops abruptly. “And I had to go back to my hometown and deal with some… stuff. I didn’t – I wasn’t trying to just _fuck off._ There was just a lot happening.”

He can hear the long, deep breath that Steve takes through the phone. “Are you okay, now? We can reschedule the tour for a few months from now, let everyone know you had some personal issues and –“

“I can’t do that show anymore,” he interrupted.

“Why is that?” Steve asks.

“I’m – I’m done using a ghost writer, man. I can’t – I can’t do that anymore. I’m sick of fucking lying on stage, telling jokes I don’t even think are funny –“

“Where is this coming from, Rich? You’ve never had a problem with it before. You’re the one who asked for a writer! Do you even have material prepared?”

Richie sighs, lifting his glasses off his face. He hasn’t touched his contact lenses since Derry. “No.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Rich.”

“I just… If I’m gonna pretend to be someone else, I want people to know it’s not me. I don’t want to be known as this misogynistic asshole anymore. I like doing impressions and shit, I like playing characters, but… I’ve been playing this one for too fucking long.”

“As poetic as that is,” Steve says, “maybe you should make a _slow readjustment_ of your image. We’ll get you a co-writer, you can do a new show, maybe back off with the kind of jokes you don’t like… You don’t want people to know you’ve been fucking… _playing a character_ without them knowing. They’re going to consider that lying.”

“I have been lying!” Richie says. “I’ve been – I’m not doing any slow readjustment, okay? If I – If I do anything else it’ll be after I…”

“After you what?” Steve says nervously. “And what do you mean, _if_? You’re under contract, Rich, and after this cancelled tour shit you can’t afford to break it. You still have 60 shows to perform. I don’t care if it’s new shit or old shit, but your ass is going to be on that fucking stage.”

“The only way I’m getting on that stage is if everybody knows I’m…” He trails off, wishing he could just force the word out of his mouth.

“Don’t fucking do this, Rich,” Steve says coldly. Richie laughs faintly, shaking his head. Of course Steve already knew. He hadn’t dated in five years, never had a serious relationship in all the time they knew each other, and had admitted he didn’t know how to write jokes about women and needed a writer.

“It’s people like you who fucking – People like you are the reason people like me end up 40 and alone and repressed, man. You’ve known and – and what? You were just going to happily let me live the rest of my life fucking miserable? So long as I was making you a buck? Fuck you, dude. Break the fucking contract. Put me in debt. What the fuck ever, I’m done.”

He hangs up the phone, breathing heavily. He doesn’t even think before he’s pulling up another contact in his phone, pressing the call button. His breathing slows as he listens to the ringing on the other line.

“Edward Kaspbrak speaking.”

_“Edward Kaspbrak speaking_,” Richie mocks, grinning when Eddie squawks.

“Shut the fuck up, I’m a professional, fuck you,” Eddie says.

“Yes, you sound very professional,” he says, heart pounding against his chest. “Hey, uh, I wanted to tell you something.”

“Yeah?”

“You’re not busy or anything, right?”

“I’m, uh. I just left a meeting with a divorce attorney,” he says awkwardly. Richie hates the way he sounds; his mind runs wild with reasons Eddie would be uncomfortable telling him that, but the worst is that just because Eddie was divorcing his wife, didn’t mean he was going to be with _him_. “I’m walking to my car right now.”

“A rental, I’m presuming,” Richie says, ignoring the nerves rushing through his body. “Since you crashed yours.”

“Whatever,” Eddie says. Richie can hear the eye roll. “What’s up?”

“I just… I fired my manager. Like, just now, on the phone. Literally just now. Like, I hung up and then I called you.” He winces, wishes he knew someway to get himself to just shut up sometimes.

“Oh,” Eddie says softly. “Why?”

“He uh…” He closes his eyes, leans his head back against the couch. “Pretty much told me I couldn’t come out. That if I wanted to change my show it would need to be a slow change, and uh… I don’t think it’d ever change into anything I actually want to do, so… Hey, risk analysts know like, contract shit, right?”

“Did you break a contract?”

“It’s possible.”

Eddie huffs. “I’ll find you a lawyer. We can absolutely fuck their shit up if we claim discrimination –“

“Yeah,” Richie cuts him off, letting out a sigh of relief at Eddie’s use of the word _we_. “We can – we can do that.”

“I’m sorry, Richie,” Eddie says, his voice softening. “It’s bullshit that they’d do that to you.”

“I don’t know what to do now,” he admits. “Everything just… feels so fucked up, you know? Like I’ve just been dropped into somebody else’s life or something. I don’t – I don’t want to live in this big house, I want an apartment, something small, and I don’t want to do anyone else’s jokes, and I want to… be _gay_, and for that to not destroy everything.”

“It’s not going to destroy everything,” Eddie says quickly. “You’re going to be fine, okay? You’ll find a new manager, write some new material…”

“I just…” he trails off. The thought popped in his head unbidden, and he hadn’t realized how true it was until it suddenly sat at the forefront of his mind. “I don’t know if I want the whole world to see _me_. It was okay when it was this fake me, but if I did my own stuff it’d be…”

“Too real?” Eddie suggests.

“Yeah,” he agrees. He feels like puking. “But that’s my fucking career, I don’t know what else to do, I’m not good at anything, Eds, I’m fucking useless, I can’t –“

“Calm down,” Eddie tells him. “You’re not useless, and no matter what you’re going to find something you love that allows you to be out. Maybe you could – I mean, have you thought about acting?”

Richie pauses. Early in his career he had thought about acting, but had been too afraid to try it. At least he already knew he was good at comedy, but what if he tried acting and absolutely sucked?

“It’s just a suggestion,” Eddie says, when Richie doesn’t answer.

“No, I mean, I’m thinking about it,” he says. “What about you? I mean, you saw a divorce lawyer? How’d that go?”

Eddie groans. “I filed and they’re gonna serve her the papers this week. I haven’t even gone home, I’ve been staying in a hotel so I haven’t seen her. It’s a chickenshit move, to tell her I want a divorce like this, but… she makes me feel so fucking _guilty_, man. Like I’m the worst asshole in the world. I was afraid I’d give in, fall right back into all of it, if I actually saw her.”

Richie chews on his lip nervously. “What are you gonna do in the meantime?”

“I don’t know, really. Get an apartment, I guess? I can’t quit my job. I had no idea how fucking _expensive_ getting divorced is. Do you know how much this is going to cost me? Apart from the fact that I’ll probably let her have the house and the car and she’ll get half of my –“

“It’ll be worth it, though, right?”

Eddie stops ranting and is quiet for a moment, before he says, “Yeah, it will be.”

Richie closes his eyes and focuses on breathing deeply. He doesn’t know what to say. How can he make it clear what he wants without coming right out and saying it? And how fucked up is it to tell someone you want to be with them when they literally _just_ filed for divorce?

“Richie, he said it could take over a year,” Eddie says finally, after they’ve sat quietly, listening to each other breathe. “It depends on how hard she fights it, but… Knowing her, she’s going to fight it. I’ll probably have to go to court.”

Richie sags into the couch. His chest aches at how sad Eddie’s voice sounds, how resigned. He wishes he knew some way to make it better. It just means more suffering for Eddie, and it means he’ll probably be stuck in New York at least until the divorce is finalized.

His hands shake as he thinks about the fact that New York is a great place for entertainers to live. Maybe he could write? Work on a late night show writing jokes, or on scripts for shitty comedies. If Eddie’s stuck there, and there’s nothing keeping him here except an empty house and a broken contract…

“Hey, Rich?”

“Hm?”

“I have to get back to work, I’ve just been on my lunch break,” Eddie says. Richie can hear the regret in his voice. “But I’ll see you soon, right? We’ll figure something out.”

“Of course, Eds,” he says. “I’ll see you soon.”


	12. i'll tell you the truth, but never goodbye

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you've stuck around this long, thank you so much! this is the longest thing i've ever written and i can't believe it's finally finished! if you want to cry about it with me, i'm on [tumblr](http://bookeddie.tumblr.com)

Every important thing he owns fits into two large suitcases. He’s emptied the one full of medication, kept only the things he really needed – mostly over the counter stuff, but he’s got anxiety pills he’s trying to take less of, too – and went to the house when he knew Myra would be at work. He’d packed everything he could think of, but even still it hadn’t been a lot. It left an ache an his stomach, seeing how little of himself really existed in the world.

But he needs everything he’s got, because his new apartment would be ready in two days. It didn’t take long for him to get sick of the hotel room he’s in, regardless how nice it is. He’s been back to work for two days, ignoring questions about the bandage on his cheek and where he disappeared to. He’s made an appointment with a therapist, scheduled for next week. It’s only been six days but his attorney has already called him to come in for another meeting, which he doesn’t think spells good news as far as Myra’s reaction. The only thing getting him through the days right now are the nightly phone calls with Richie. They all text, all the losers, in the group chat throughout the day, and sometimes Richie and Eddie will send something to just the other, but most of their communication comes when Eddie’s in bed, his phone pressed to his ear.

Richie’s already searching for a new manager – his old one had called him back only a day later, and with legal assistance they were on their way to dissolving their contract. He’s packing his house, telling Eddie that he’s probably not going to keep most of what he owns, but he gets vague when Eddie tries to figure out where he’s moving. All he knows is Richie doesn’t seem to have much of an idea either, beyond “_some apartment in the city_.” Eddie pictures one, maybe a studio in LA with big windows so the sun can shine on the hardwood floors. He pictures himself there, too, maybe in a year once his divorce is over. He desperately hopes Richie waits that long for him. He desperately hopes Richie is waiting for him at all.

He’s sitting at his desk, typing up a report without really paying much attention, when his phone rings. It’s not even noon, and he answers with a confused, “hello?”

“Hey! Uh… So this might sound a little weird but, um, are you busy in like, seven hours?”

Eddie stares blankly at his computer screen, holding the phone to his ear. “What? Why?”

“Can you please just answer the question?” Richie presses, almost urgently.

It’s a Friday, and as embarrassing as it should be, he shrugs and says, “I don’t have plans.”

“Okay,” Richie says, sounding relieved. He’s about to open his mouth to ask more questions when Richie asks, “Can you pick me up from the airport, then? In seven hours, I mean.”

Eddie’s eyes widen. “You mean the airport, like, _here_? In New York? JFK?”

“That’s the one,” Richie agrees calmly, though Eddie can hear a slight edge to his voice.

“Oh,” Eddie says dumbly, head spinning. “Uh. Yeah, yeah, I can pick you up, just, um, text me your flight info.”

“Okay,” he says, voice brightening a bit. “Okay, cool, um, I’ll see you in seven hours then.”

When they hang up, Eddie realizes he didn’t ask how long Richie planned on staying or even where – as much as he hopes Richie plans on staying with him, he could’ve gotten his own hotel room somewhere.

His hands shake for the rest of the day, and no amount of deep breathing slows his racing heart down. He listens to the radio on the drive to the airport, tries to focus on the music and sing along, anything to distract himself, but he’s a live-wire and it takes everything he has just to keep breathing. The itch that’s lived under his skin for years has returned, but it’s not like it used to be. This is excitement, and nerves, and hope, not the confused, sad, and lonely feeling he’s used to. It doesn't feel so bad anymore.

He parks in the pick-up line and gets out of the car, watching the airport doors once Richie has texted to let him know he’s picking up his luggage at baggage claim. His mind tells him that luggage means more than a carry on, means more stuff, more _time_.

His heart jumps when Richie exits the doors with a duffel bag on his shoulder and two large suitcases rolling behind him. He’s looking around, and when his eyes land on Eddie they light up, causing Eddie's already racing heart to jump. Richie rushes over, apologizing as his luggage bumps into people, and Eddie’s laughing by the time he makes it to the car.

“You’re like an over-sized puppy,” he says with a smile.

“Shut up,” Richie says, smiling, then points at the trunk. “Can you open this?”

They get his bags loaded and once the trunk is closed, Eddie stops just to _look_. Richie looks back for only a moment, before he’s biting his lip and looking at the ground. Eddie sees the way his cheeks have turned pink. He reaches out and wraps his arms around Richie’s waist, breathing him in and letting out a shaky sigh when Richie’s arms wrap around his neck and back. The hug doesn’t last long. There are people waiting behind Eddie’s car, and he wants to get back on the road quickly.

“How long is the drive?” Richie asks once they’re buckled in and Eddie is pulling out of the parking lot.

“About 45 minutes,” he answers. “My hotel is near my work. And then, uh, I’m moving into my apartment in a few days. So if you're still here you can. Um, you can come – like, to the apartment. With me.”

He can feel the heat in his cheeks, can hear the pounding of his heart in his ears. He wants to shut his eyes against the embarrassment, the awkwardness, but he’s driving so he just keeps his eyes on the road.

“That’s like – I mean, sorry, I just assumed you’d be – you’d be staying with me, but it’s… You don’t have to… If you have a hotel, or.” He stops himself and begins to chew nervously on his lip.

“I’m staying with you,” Richie says gently, like Eddie’s a wild animal he doesn’t want to spook. Eddie figures right now, that’s not far from the truth. Somehow the not-knowing, the uncertainty of their future, has all crashed in on him now, with Richie seated right next to him. “And I’ll come to the apartment with you. Your… Your apartment in the city, yeah?”

His breath hitches, because he’s heard those words before. His knuckles are white on the steering wheel. He thinks about the huge suitcases and duffel bag in his trunk, about Richie packing up his house and keeping only the essentials.

Richie plans on moving to an apartment in the city.

Eddie had just assumed the city he meant was LA.

“I’m gonna pull over,” Eddie says, working on autopilot as he turns onto a side street and parks in an empty lot.

* * *

“Is this the part where you murder me?” Richie jokes, nerves threatening to spill over. Eddie laughs a little as he takes off his seatbelt and turns to face him. Richie does the same, slowly. His stomach is in knots as he watches Eddie, his face bright red but his bright brown eyes so determined.

“You’re…” Eddie huffs a breath, like he’s gathering his courage. “You’re moving in? With me? In my apartment?”

“Uh, I mean, it’s – I know I should’ve asked, I just – if you don’t want that it’s totally fine, I’ll find my own place, my own hotel… I mean, _no_, it wouldn’t be fine, it would fucking _suck_ but… I just thought that no one… No one’s ever done things for you. Like, no one’s –“ He pauses to take a breath, already feeling embarrassed, “No one’s loved you, like, the _right_ way. And you… um, you deserve… that. I thought maybe you’d like, uh, a grand gesture, or something. So.”

His eyes are glued to the console between them, but they dart up when Eddie whispers, “_Holy fuck_.”

Eddie looks nothing less than shocked. Richie thinks he could probably jump out of the car and run a mile with the amount of nervous energy thrumming through his veins.

“Richie,” Eddie mumbles, still staring. The corners of his mouth twitch. “Come here.”

And then his hands are reaching across the center console and landing on Richie’s shoulders, tugging him closer until they’re kissing, longer than just a moment this time, long enough that he can get one hand on the back of Eddie’s neck, thumb sliding into soft hair, long enough that Eddie’s hands have drifted down to his chest to clutch the fabric of his shirt, long enough that he has to pull away to draw in a breath.

Eddie’s eyes are closed, lashes dark against his pale skin. There are dark circles under his eyes, like he hasn’t been sleeping. They stay close, breathing each other’s air, and Eddie keeps his eyes closed, like he’s afraid to open them. Richie’s hand drifts down Eddie’s neck to his shoulder, at first to pull him closer but he quickly feels how much tension is in the muscles there, and he frowns. He digs his fingers in a little and Eddie sharply gasps. His eyes open and meet Richie’s.

There’s just a second of silence before they both lean back in, the press of their lips more desperate than before. Richie tries to take it slow, doesn’t want to scare Eddie off, but then Eddie’s the one deepening the kiss, leaning over the console to get closer, parting his lips and whining in the back of his throat when Richie licks into his mouth.

And then Eddie’s pulling back suddenly, practically throwing himself back into his seat and putting his seatbelt on, chest heaving. Richie watches wide-eyed, unable to comprehend what just happened.

“We need to get back,” Eddie says by way of explanation as he pulls out of the parking lot. “We can’t – We need to get back to the hotel.”

Richie sits back too, keeps watching Eddie as he drives. His jaw is clearly clenched, his shoulders are tensed, and his knuckles are white around the steering wheel again.

“Eds, are you okay?” He asks, once his own breathing has calmed. His mind is racing, and Eddie’s face is giving nothing away. Did he regret it? Was it too far? Did he just…_not like it?_

Eddie nods stiffly. “I’m fine, just… Hotel.”

Richie frowns but doesn’t say anything else.

After a while Eddie seems to have calmed a little; Richie can see his jaw has loosened and his shoulders have dropped a bit. He’s still worried, stress written all over his body, and after a momentary debate with himself he reaches over, lets his forearm rest against the back of Eddie’s seat and softly cups the back of his neck with his hand. At first he just holds it there, makes sure Eddie’s not going to throw him off. Once he’s reasonably sure it’s okay, he uses his fingers to massage the tight muscles there. He hears Eddie make a choked noise and thinks if he were twenty years younger that sound alone could’ve gotten him hard.

As it is, Eddie keeps making noises, quiet and breathy, and Richie notices with confusion that he seems to be getting even _more_ tense. He lets his fingers drift up into his hair, scratching at his scalp. He watches his own hand in fascination, remembering all the times he’s wanted his hands in Eddie’s hair. His fingers get caught for a moment, giving the hair on Eddie’s head the lightest tug, then Eddie clears his throat. Richie glances from his own hand to Eddie’s face. His cheeks are red and his lips are redder, like he’s been biting them, and Richie wishes he’d been watching _that_ instead.

“Rich,” Eddie says quietly. “I need you to stop.”

Richie yanks his hand away like he’d been burned, his heart suddenly in his throat.

“Eds, I’m sorry –“

“No, it’s not -” He takes a sharp breath and lets it out slowly. “It wasn’t bad, it was just… _too_ good. And um, we’re in a car.”

“_Oh_,” he breathes. His eyes dart lower, to Eddie’s lap, and he feels himself hardening when he sees the bulge in Eddie’s jeans. “Fuck.”

Eddie seems embarrassed, continuing to talk, words leaving his mouth faster and faster. “I’m just not used to that, being, um, touched. In a good way. Like just… Because you _want_ to. I, um, I was already a little worked up from before and you just – I – your _hands_, you know? I don’t have any, like, experience with this. Being with someone I actually –“

He huffs, pausing between words.

“I’m so _fucking_ attracted to you. I’ve never – I haven’t felt like this since I was 17, I haven’t felt anything close to this, and I don’t know _how_ you’re handling this, because I feel like I’m losing my mind right now. And it’s not even – you could have a fucking twin who looked exactly like you and it wouldn’t – it wouldn’t be the same, it’s because it’s _you_, and you want to kiss me, and make_ grand gestures_ for me, and apparently emotional intimacy is my fucking kink because it’s doing it for me –“

It punches a laugh out of Richie. His whole body is buzzing, listening to Eddie talk, because he still can’t believe Eddie feels all the same things he does. 

“Anyway. I need you to say something now so that I can finally shut the fuck up.”

Richie laughs again. The words tumble into his mind, and he finds he wants to say them.

“I love you.”

Eddie looks like he’s not breathing for a moment, but his cheeks are getting even more red, spreading to the tips of his ears, and his lips are curling into the cutest smile Richie’s ever fucking seen.

“Oh,” he says, and Richie can hear the wonder in his voice. He feels warm, and whole; he can’t even remember what the emptiness of his house in LA felt like.

“Yeah,” he confirms, then grins. “Sorry I did more emotional intimacy, though. Not exactly a boner killer, eh, Eds?”

Eddie snorts. “Shut the fuck up, oh my god.”

“You just told me to talk!”

“I take it back!” Eddie yelled through his laughter.

“No take-backs, Edward,” Richie says seriously.

Eddie glances at him quickly before looking back out the windshield. He’s smiling, and Richie’s heart is on fucking fire. “I love you, too.”

“No take-backs, Edward,” he says breathlessly. Eddie's smile grows.

"No take-backs."

* * *

They each grab a suitcase from the trunk and Richie shoulders his duffel as they make their way into the hotel.

“Fancy,” Richie comments once they enter the lobby.

“Shut up,” Eddie says, pressing the button for the elevator. Once they climb on and the doors close, he feels Richie pressing up against his side. Long arms wrap around his waist and he lets his head fall against his broad chest. They don’t say anything on the ride up, but they untangle when they reach their floor. Richie follows Eddie down the hall and into the room, the door shutting loudly behind them.

Eddie leaves Richie’s suitcase by his own and sits down on the bed, looking up at Richie. He looks a little lost, glancing around the room as if looking for some kind of sign or answer.

“Are you hungry?” Eddie asks, and Richie finally looks at him. “I know it’s a long flight and airplane food sucks, so…”

“I’m actually fucking starving, Spaghetti,” Richie says, pulling a groan from Eddie.

“I can’t tell if you’re being serious or if that was a sex joke,” Eddie says.

“I’m hungry!” Richie insists with a laugh, flopping onto the bed next to him. “Let’s order room service.”

They order cheeseburgers, which Richie says is a big _fuck you_ to the allergies Eddie doesn’t have. Once the food is ordered, they make themselves comfortable, taking off shoes and jackets, putting wallets on the bedside table. Eddie sits on the bed with his back against the headboard, watching Richie as he digs through one of his suitcases for something. He finally pulls out a small clear bag, in which Eddie can see travel sized shampoo and body wash and a toothbrush.

“I’m going to wash the smell of plane off me, if you don’t mind,” he says, walking into the bathroom. Their estimated wait for the food had been half an hour, so he doesn’t expect Richie to be long, but every second is still torture. All he can think about is Richie on the other side of the wall, naked and wet, and he hates his brain for reverting back to being 17.

He gets up, uncomfortable in his jeans, and opens a drawer in the dresser. His clothes were nicely put away since his stay was so lengthy, and he has no trouble finding a pair of plaid pajama pants. He slips his jeans off and puts on the pants before searching the next drawer for a t-shirt. He pulls his Polo off, drops it into the small hamper next to the dresser, and before he can put on his shirt he hears a sharp intake of breath.

He looks toward the bathroom to see Richie standing in the doorway, his hair wet and curly and his cheeks pink from the heat of the shower. He’s wearing a t-shirt of his own, some band Eddie doesn’t recognize, and athletic shorts that Eddie’s positive Richie’s never actually worked out in.

They stare at each other for a minute before Eddie starts to pull on his shirt, ignoring Richie’s cries of protest and laughing.

“It should be illegal for you to wear a shirt,” Richie says sadly.

Eddie rolls his eyes but feels warm at the compliment. “You’re stupid.”

“And you’re the hottest thing I’ve ever seen,” he says, his eyes trailing down Eddie’s body. Eddie shakes his head, giddy, but doesn’t answer, climbing back onto the bed instead. He’s barely settling before Richie is next to him, leaning over him, a hand on his hip. The heat from his hand radiates against Eddie’s skin and he suddenly wishes it were illegal for him to wear a shirt, too, if it meant Richie would touch him like that. He’s leaning up for a kiss when a knock on the door startles them both. Richie curses, jumping up and rushing to the door while Eddie flops back onto the pillows with an irritated huff.

Richie carries the tray of food to the bed and they eat quietly. Eddie’s heart doesn’t slow down the entire time, his mind running wild with what was about to happen before the food arrived.

Richie finishes first, and when Eddie takes his last bite of burger he’s quickly moving the tray off the bed, turning the overhead light off and flicking on a lamp, placing his glasses on the bedside table. Eddie watches him move around the room, his shorts low on his hips and t-shirt tight across his broad shoulders. When he finally makes it back to the bed, Eddie wastes no time pulling him closer, pressing their lips together.

Richie is holding himself up, not letting his body rest against Eddie’s, and Eddie hates it. It feels like Richie still thinks he’s going to change his mind, just get up and leave or kick him out.

He puts his hands on Richie’s bony hips and tugs a little, just enough so Richie knows what he wants. He moans into Eddie’s mouth and lets himself be guided, until their hips meet. Eddie can hear himself making noises as he cants his hips upward, trying to find friction, and Richie keeps gasping against his mouth until they aren’t really kissing, just breathing into each other’s mouths.

He feels Richie’s hand dip beneath the waistband of his pants and throws his head back, moaning when Richie’s lips attach to his neck.

“Oh my god,” he mumbles, lifting his hips and letting Richie pull his pants and underwear down. Richie’s hand finds his cock quickly, and he can’t believe just a _hand_ could feel so fucking good, like he could explode from it. He pushes at Richie’s shorts until they’re both undressed from the waist down. He lifts his head to look as Richie grinds their cocks together, crying out at the feeling. His hands find the hem of his own shirt and he yanks it off, separating from Richie long enough to pull it over his head, and grinning when Richie pulls off his own.

The room is still for a quiet moment. Richie’s holding himself up again, one of Eddie’s legs between his own. Eddie stares up at him and his mind quiets.

“I love you,” he says, because it’s the only thing he can think about.

Richie’s mouth breaks into a smile and he leans down, pressing a kiss to the scar on Eddie’s cheek.

It makes his heart stop for a second, and he closes his eyes against the wave of emotion that threatens to drown him. He lifts a hand and tangles his fingers in wet curls, pulling until Richie’s mouth is against his, until their torsos press together and he can feel soft chest hair that isn’t his own, until Richie’s reaching down again to take them both in his hand, drawing a cry from Eddie’s throat.

Their kiss turns messy, wet, and Eddie loves it more than he ever expected, loves the feeling of Richie’s body and Richie’s cock against him so much he’s dizzy with it. And then Richie’s mouth slides down his jaw to his neck, hot and wet and leaving goosebumps in its wake. He lets them both go for a moment before taking just Eddie in his hand.

“Rich,” he mumbles, arms reaching around his shoulders. “_Rich_, oh my god.”

“It’s good?” Richie’s voice is lower than normal and he feels himself throb in Richie’s hand. “_Fuck, _guess so.”

“I’m – Richie, I want –“ He wants Richie to come too, doesn’t want him to have to wait any longer. When he gets a hand around him Richie curses into his neck, just breathing shaky breaths against his skin and whimpering. Eddie moves faster, wants more of that sound in his ear, wants to see how Richie looks when he’s falling apart, wants to always be the one to put him back together.

He can feel himself getting close to the edge, heat building low in his stomach, and he’s barely aware of the cries falling from his own lips.

“C’mon,” he says quietly, using his free hand to bring Richie’s mouth back to his. “’m close, are you –“

“_Fuck, Eds_.”

Richie’s eyes find his and his chest is so full he can barely breathe with it.

“I love you, Rich, _I love you_ –“

His release hits him hard and he shudders as Richie strokes him through it, presses kisses to his lips. He’s dazed, but he quickly realizes his own hand had stopped moving, and he strokes faster, watching Richie’s face as he whines, presses his lips back to Eddie’s neck.

“C’mon,” he repeats, feeling Richie shaking above him. He shoves at his shoulder until Richie’s on his back, and then he’s rolling over and looking at Richie spread out on the bed, a flush down his body and his chest heaving and some of Eddie's come on his stomach. He’s the best thing Eddie’s ever seen.

Richie’s reaching for him, and Eddie starts to realize how much he likes the feeling of their lips pressed together, even if they’re not really kissing. He reaches for Richie’s cock again, reveling in the whine that escapes his lips.

“C’mon,” he says again into Richie’s mouth. “Rich, _baby_, you’re so –“

Richie lets out a moan when he comes, his forehead scrunching up and eyes shut tight.

Eddie kisses him and feels him shiver, runs his clean hand up his chest until he’s cupping his cheek. Richie leans into it, separating their lips and breathing out heavily, opening his eyes.

“Holy _shit_,” he says with a faint laugh. “Fuck, Eds.”

“Good?”

“Didn’t know it could be that good,” Richie admits.

“Me neither,” he says. “But now I’m sticky and gross, and _you’re_ sticky and gross so…”

“Eds, are you suggesting _round two_ in the shower? Do you know how old we are?”

Eddie laughs, shoving at Richie’s chest and only feeling a little embarrassed at how flirty the action feels. “Not for round two, just… Together.”

Richie smiles up at him before he stands up, grabbing Eddie by the hand and pulling him up from the bed. “I suppose that doesn’t sound too bad.”

Eddie follows him into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him as Richie turns on the shower.

* * *

Eddie fits so perfectly against him that Richie wonders, not for the first time, how the fuck he got so lucky. He can’t sleep, staring up at the ceiling of their bedroom and watching the fan move in quick circles. Eddie’s breath is hot against his skin where he’s curled up into his side. He sighs, trying not to move and wake Eddie, but his boyfriend stirs anyway, grumbling under his breath as he sits up.

“Why are you awake?” He asks once he has his bearings.

“Can’t sleep, too nervous,” Richie says, pulling Eddie back into his chest.

“You’re going to do great,” Eddie promises sleepily, fingers running up and down his side in a soothing motion. “It’s funny, they’re going to love it.”

“Hope so,” he mumbles. “Kind of have my eggs all in one basket.”

“Fuck that,” Eddie tells him. “If they don’t want you then there will be other roles. And they’d be fucking stupid not to want you, so… _Fuck that_.”

Richie laughs a little at the determination in Eddie’s voice. He’s never had anyone to hold him in the middle of the night before, to tell him that things are going to be okay. He's never had anyone who'd still be there even if they aren't.

“You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” he admits quietly. Eddie stills against him. “You’re my best friend, you know? And you love me back. Best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“Richie,” Eddie says softly. “I – You, too. The very best.”

Richie blinks back the tears that have formed in his eyes. “I’m sorry we lost so much time.”

He feels Eddie’s lips against his chest, over his heart.

“Not your fault, baby,” he says. “Besides, if 20 years and a fucking clown are what it takes to have this? I’d do it a thousand times over.”

Richie tightens his hold on Eddie, pressing a kiss into his hair. “Me too,” he promises, closing his eyes.

Even if he bombs his audition tomorrow, and even if Eddie’s next meeting with his lawyer goes badly, it’s worth it. It’s worth it because they have a save the date card on their refrigerator with a picture of Bev and Ben’s smiling faces on it. Because Mike sends photos from every new state he visits, and Bill finally wrote an ending that didn’t suck. It’s worth it because they’re alive, and they’re _whole_, and they’re in each other’s arms, and it’s the best thing that ever happened.

“I love you,” he whispers into the darkness.

He feels Eddie’s smile against his skin. “I love you, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The End :)


End file.
